The land of my ancestors. I was visiting graves here recently.
This is the Allegheny River, where it wends through the great north woods.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
River Ridge Farm, Venango County
The Samuel Justus Trail is a rail trail that runs along an abandoned stretch of railroad between Franklin and Oil City. It follows the Allegheny River in its northern reaches. When I was a kid, this was still an old railroad bed, but now it's the playground of provincial yuppies.
The Allegheny River is beautiful up here, not as big as it is in Pittsburgh, but wilder and cleaner.
About two miles from the Franklin trailhead, going toward Oil City, you reach the former estate of Joseph Sibley, an erstwhile politician, congressman, judge, and mayor of Franklin. This stone pylon in the woods marks the edge of his old estate.
The estate--known as "River Ridge Farm"--has long since been divided up and sold into smaller parcels. But it was vast in its day. If you click on this photo and look closely, you can almost see the Italianate mansion near the top of the hill, in the forest. (For a better picture, click here.) It now belongs to some fundamentalist Christian sect. After passing out of Sibley's hands, it was owned for a time by the "White Fathers," an order of missionary priests who worked in Africa and retreated here.
But there are three grand houses on the estate. One of the lesser houses can be seen in this photo. I believe this stone structure was the guest house. There is also a large redbrick house for the farm manager. In the 1960s, my father almost bought the farmhouse, but thought that it was a little too remote. Instead, he bought a big townhouse in Oil City. Notice the oil derrick in the foreground. The grounds of the estate, which were once fields and gardens, are now planted in derricks.
Joseph Sibley was placed under house arrest at one point, and he was not allowed to leave his mansion on the hill. In its heyday, this was the entrance to the estate from the railroad tracks. Sibley had his own private railroad station here, and he whisked away frequently to New York, Harrisburg, and Washington, DC. The roof that is seen through the archway is to a small tower of carillon bells that played several times each day. They've been silent for many years.
President Woodrow Wilson visited Sibley here at River Ridge, and legend claims that it was here he drafted his "Fourteen Points" at the close of World War One. This grand estate with its imprisoned master used to loom large in my childish imagination...always across the river and in the woods, but visible from where I was.
Urban Exploring: The Abandoned "First Baptist Church of McKeesport"
The First Baptist Church of McKeesport was founded in 1820. Its majestic building, seen here, was constructed in 1904. My guess is that more than a handful of homeless people are using the old parish hall, in the basement, as sleeping quarters--though none were present when I went through.
See the brambles growing on the windowsill. An old book I found online stated that in 1939 the congregation had a membership of 908. Of course, McKeesport's economy suffered an almost total collapse in the 1980s. The nearest I can figure, the structure has been vacant since 1990.
McKeesport is a little Detroit, with less crime. I located a 2005 Post Gazette article saying that a black Baptist congregation was attempting to purchase and refurbish this building. (Apparently that didn't work out.) The same article estimated that the church had been abandoned for at least fifteen years. It's really surprising how little information I can find about the church.
The strange dots on the ceiling are some kind of fungus. So much of McKeesport is derelict, but most of the grandest churches are still hanging on, or they've been re-purposed as other things. The lovely old synagogue up the hill from this place is now a Pentecostal church. And the old onion dome of the Eastern Orthodox church is still standing tall.
In its day, this dome was surely a stained glass skylight. Perhaps it was covered and back-lit when it began to leak.
This is the chancel, which would have had a pulpit in the dead center. All the pews and other furniture have been long-since removed. The name "Baptist" refers to the fact that this church only baptizes adults, and they do it by dunking them entirely under water. To the far right of this shot, you can see the strange cistern-like configuration where this rite took place.
I did find the festering carcass of a raccoon here in the sanctuary, which creeped me out a little. Whenever you see a dead raccoon out in the open, you can be pretty sure it was hit by a car or died of rabies. I heard other large rodents scrambling around above the ceiling, and I really didn't want to meet up with any rabid raccoons.
Look at the elaborately detailed scroll-work on these columns. This building was truly a landmark.
Baptists are largely branded as right-wing wackos nowadays--like the Westboro Baptist Church, which marches around with signs that say, "God Hates Fags." But the Baptist faith also has an old and venerable academic and liberal tradition--one that values beauty, and reverence, and social justice. This progressive wing of the American Baptist Church has largely been eclipsed by conservatism, but it still lives on in places like Riverside Church in New York City and Colgate Rochester Divinity School. But alas, it does not live on in McKeesport.