First Baptist Church, Pittsburgh

It's fairly uncommon to find a really beautiful Baptist church.  That faith tradition has not historically emphasized the importance of beauty, and space, and light to create a sense of the numinous.  If anything, they tended to see such things as worldly distractions from the real beauty of the sacred texts.  But here in Pittsburgh, even the Baptists built beautiful churches--or at least one.

I've been telling myself for about a year that someday I'm going to drop in on First Baptist Church of Pittsburgh to ask permission to look around and take some pictures.  Today at last was the day.  Though the church office staff and clergy were not there, a friendly lady who works for their denomination (which has offices in the building) let me in and turned on the lights for me.

 I was hoping she'd go back to work and let me roam free, but no such luck.  She lingered near and chatted while I explored.  This made it impossible to really look the place over and find its hidden corners.  

 Ah, but this old church has shadowy staircases, darkened rooms, and obscure passages aplenty.  It's apparently a small congregation, despite the cavernous building, so much of the space sits unused, waiting for the faithful to return.  Now, I've known Baptists who would have thought such things were idolatrous, but there's even a statue in this place!  

 Click on these photos to enlarge them; the florid details are worth seeing up close.  Charles Connick, who designed and made the stained glass windows at First Baptist also did the windows at Heinz Chapel and East Liberty Presbyterian Church here in Pittsburgh, in addition to St. John the Divine Episcopal Cathedral and St. Patrick Roman Catholic Cathedral in New York.

 Not sure who this is.  It looks like a woman, and she's holding some sort of scroll.  Because I felt as if I was being watched, I didn't bother to read the scroll.  In fact, I hurried through my visit so that my hostess could return to work.

This fellow is definitely Moses.  Not only is he holding the two tablets of the Decalogue, but he's got those telltale horns sprouting from his scalp.  According to the myth, when Moses returned from the holy mountain where he'd communed with God and received the Law, his face was all aglow with a holy light.  But because the Hebrew verb "to glow or radiate" can also mean "to grow horns," most old depictions of the Patriarch show him with horns. 

Now that's a nice pulpit.  The fellows carved in the skirt are probably the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

 All in all, it's a much lighter, airier church than many of Pittsburgh's other neo-Gothic edifices.  It's got a pleasant, open feel to it.  The exterior details are worth a look, too.

Click on this photo.  Above the main entrance, you've got the hand of Providence and the Agnus Dei flanked on both sides by symbols of the Twelve Apostles.  A nice grapevine theme holds the whole composition together.  The words etched into the archway are an obscure verse from the Book of Revelation: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city."

November's Last Hours

We just got back from yet another trip to North Carolina, where I got pretty seriously lost in the Pisgah National Forest--on the trail to the original Cold Mountain--and scaled the dizzy heights of Chimney Rock.  They don't mark the trails on the Pisgah; they just expect you to know where you're going, so it's easy to lose your way.  I was prepared to build a debris hut and stay the night, but it would have scared my wife too badly.  I don't know how it is that I've been to North Carolina four times this year.  

My favorite season is drawing to a close.  Good bye, November, these gray days of the soul.  I'll anxiously await your return next year.  It's not that I hate Christmas.  It's just that I hate all the market-driven Christmas mania that begins even before Thanksgiving.  These last lingering hours of November are good, too.  We don't need the Yuletide, and we don't need the snow.  We don't need the garish decorations or the sentimental music.  All we need is these dark hours.  I could make do with a wattle-and-daub cabin in the woods, a woods very much like this.  I feel confident that I know how to build one, and the world I'm fleeing would barely miss me.

More Rural Abandon, Greene County

This place is posted but very nearly irresistible to a ghoulish trespasser like me...  Too bad there was a junky old car parked in front of the house just opposite; I might have gone inside.

Here's the backside of the same house.  It stands at the turn-off to get to SGL #302, described below, right at the corner of Nebo Ridge Road and Walker Hill Road.  Aren't the road names great down here?

 This old farm was very tempting.  It's right at the place where you turn off of Walker Hill to pursue Smokey Row Lane into the game lands.  It's been abandoned for a long time, but there were still curtains in some windows, and it called to me.

 Here's the front of the house, as seen from the driveway.  There are no "No Trespassing" signs, and it looks like the barn is still used...which did worry me a little.  In fact, I thought I heard strange banging noises coming from in there, but there are all manner of weird noises in mining country, especially up on these windy ridges.

 I pulled into the driveway and was preparing to make for the house, when an inexplicable feeling of dread came over me.  The place just creeped me the hell out.  I turned tail, and I've been kicking myself all the way home.  I honestly think I would have gone in if there'd been a more concealed spot to park my car.  As it was, any passerby (of which I saw none) would know that somebody had parked there to snoop.

There was a handful of outbuildings, and the barn--not shown--may have horses or livestock still in it.  Somebody seems to be keeping a trailer parked near the barn, which also gave me the impression that, though the house is empty, the farm is still visited by its owner and used for various things.

Enlow Fork Revisited ~ State Game Lands #302

Upon the advice of an acquaintance, I visited Enlow Fork back in 2011 and didn't think much of the place.  It's scenic, but haunted by the sinister sounds of the Enlow Fork Mine, which is hard by.

This place belongs to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and it's also known as PA Game Lands #302.  I believe that this is the foundation of an old farmhouse; it's too small to be a barn, and the rectangle is too oblong to be an outbuilding.  Plus, you can kind of tell what a nice place it once was from its vantage point above the valley in the first photo.

To get to this very remote location, you go almost to Ryerson Station State Park, but turn into the old mining country just on the other side of the village of Windy Ridge.  Evil-looking mineworks dominate the countryside, that should have been beautiful otherwise.

This shabby old farmhouse is near the entrance to the game lands.  It looks occupied--at least as a hunting camp.  I'm so jealous... 

The wicked racket from the coal mine adds to the spookiness when you hear pheasants calling in the brush alongside the once-public roadway that winds through the little valley.  This place is overrun with pheasants, but I couldn't get any good photos of them.  Their eerie call sounds like the brakes going out in a car--metal grinding metal.

But the redtail hawks were calling, and after walking about a mile away from the parking area, the noise from the mine becomes indistinct.  Old public bridges still span the Enlow Fork, which is a tributary to the Wheeling Creek.

Nebo Methodist Church isn't anything all that special to look at, but as I've been saying, I'm more and more interested in the history and architecture of rural churches.  Enlow made a good enough destination for a day-off trek, but I don't think I'll bother to come back for a while.  There are better places nearer to the city.

Windy Gap Presbyterian Church and Environs

Wending down these little country lanes among fields, and woods, and meadows, it's a kind of joy to come upon this little white church with its old cemetery.  In this heavily Scotch-Irish countryside, you know before looking that it's Presbyterian.

It's a pleasant spot, hushed and serene, though it shows all the tell-tale signs of a neglected place.  The lawns are mowed, but the sign is barely legible, and there's a general air of disuse.  A lot of rural churches will be completely out of business within a decade, though I find online that this congregation disaffiliated with the original Presbyterian Church in order to join a fundamentalist splinter sect that's intolerant of female clergy and gays.  Is that anything like the "Seceder Church" named in the post below?  If so, this seems to be seceder country.

There's a stateliness to many of the buildings down in Washington County.  This old house is in the town of Prosperity.

Look closely to see in this photo one of the county's 23 covered bridges.  I could see disappearing to a place like this...if not for all the seceders....

I thought I could find the Western PA Conservancy's Enlow Fork site by memory.  I was wrong.  But I did end up finding the body of water known as Enlow Fork, with Washington County on this side and Greene on the far side.  The bridge to the Conservancy site has been out for years, and I don't know any other way to get there, so I just meandered and went home via West Virginia.

Chapel Cemetery, West Finley, Washington County

Had a curious drive down through the hinterlands of Washington County again.  I was trying to find the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy's site at Enlow Fork and stumbled across this place.

You are not welcome at this little cemetery.  The gates are wired shut, so you have to look in from outside an inhospitable chain link fence.

 It's too bad.  I couldn't look to see how old the stones were, and I was intrigued by the claim that this is the site of the "First Seceder Church" in Western PA.  Sounds like a Scottish thing, fractious Presbyterians.

And yet, someone does lovingly maintain this little plot.  I really wish I could have gotten a look at these many old headstones all lain together like paving stones.  Were they collected up from various corners of the cemetery where they had fallen?

 The entrance to the cemetery was also the driveway to this old farmhouse, which is completely surrounded by chain link, too.  It looks like whoever lived here died about fifteen years ago, and their adult children--who surely live an hour away--are still putting off the task of going through all their junk.

In the meantime, the front porch has collapsed.  Just look at all the stuff crammed into that carport.  Unlike some abandoned houses, this one was not inviting, though there aren't any "No Trespassing" signs.  Strangely, a dog started to bark at me from somewhere on the premises.  Do they really keep a guard dog at this empty house to keep people from stealing the twenty milk jugs hanging on the clothesline?  Poor dog.  I'm not an animal lover, but dogs are social creatures and shouldn't be left alone in places like this.  

Scott Run Hollow, Greene County

More Washington & Greene County Drive-By Shots

 Claysville, PA, is a quaint little village with some fine old buildings.

 With October quickly waning, I felt the need to spend another day off exploring the lanes and hollows of the counties to the south.  

 The countryside was lovely under glowering gray skies, with frequent rain showers.  This little farm, like two other houses along the side of this road, appears to have been bought by an energy company and emptied out. 

 The frackers and-coal diggers must be up to something sinister, altering our scenic rural landscapes forever.

 A part of me does not believe that they will ever succeed at destroying all of it.  The green rolling hills just stretch on and on for miles.  But so many of the little lanes were closed to all but frack trucks.  They've really rolled in and taken over.

 There was something strangely sublime about driving down these little roads, looking at the old farms, searching for things to discover, while the skies above drizzled endlessly, and the car stereo sang the melancholy masses of Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin.  It's dark music, serene and earthbound.  It's low and delicate but with a sad, monotonous loveliness, like the Belgian plains that produced it.  Of course, this place is nothing like Belgium, but the music really felt right here today.

Abandoned Farm on Covered Bridge Road, Greene County

 For one thing, the road is honestly little more than a gravel driveway that just keeps on going.  It follows Scott Run through a once-rich little valley of farms--see the post just below.  It's not unusual for farms to spread across both sides of a rural road, and when I came up on this one, I started snapping pictures.

 Someone still mows the lawn in spots, but this place bears all the recognizable-but-hard-to-name marks of abandon.  The vegetation is a little too wild.  The house, though not empty, looks disused, with too much debris on the porch and a lot of miscellaneous stuff in the windows and yards.  A general air of neglect and no vehicles around. 

 This is a lousy drive-by shot of the farmhouse.  Nice old place, remote and spacious.  There's a burglar alarm sign out front, which makes me think all the more that no one is living there.

 And down behind the barn, there sat an ancient car--some early 1950s model Detroit, the only car on the premises.

There were many outbuildings that I did not get photos of.  One of them looked like a little one-room schoolhouse.  If this place were in Allegheny County, I could easily look it up and see who owns it, but I'm not sure if Greene County has such things online.  I love exploring the back roads down here.