Our church is embarking on a construction project. Actually, it's been in the works for years, and on the to do list for decade. Long referred to as "the elevator project," it's grown to involve a renovation of the whole "Mission House" which abuts the church on the south side, all of whose spaces will now not only be ADA accessible but handsomely redesigned. The upstairs meeting rooms which host meetings of community groups of all kinds will finally be able to serve the whole community. Bigger changes are afoot on the ground floor. Since our main ministry is the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen and Food Pantry, a small vastly overstretched kitchen supported by dingy storage spaces down a steep staircase in the cellar and temporary refrigerators is being replaced by a large state-of-the-art kitchen; the elevator will dramatically improve access to subterranean food storage too.
Above is a view of the meeting space on the ground floor, which in recent years has been encrusted in loudly humming industrial refrigerators. Nevertheless, it was where church committees, including the vestry, met, where brigades of meal-assembling volunteers worked, and where sacred and secular activities in the church were staged. This is where choir and altar party get ready to process each Sunday. Long before, this was the space historian Heather White has helped us know was a kind of LGBT Center avant la lettre, hosting meetings and teas and even dances in the year after the Stonewall riot.
But today was the last time! When we return to the rebuilt Mission House, most of this space will be part of the new kitchen, or hallways connecting the elevator to various other spaces. The space known simply as "Mission House 1" will be gone.
Farewell Mission House 1. Thank you for holding us.
