Mother Bethel Church Historical Restoration Introduction

If you’re like me, having lived in the city for over 20+ years — 18 of which in Queen Village — you find yourself on well-worn walking paths to get to beloved destinations. For me, it was the route from our house at 3rd and Bainbridge to Washington Square: beginning at Bainbridge Green, walking north on 3rd Street, crossing South into Society Hill, ending up at the fountain at Washington Square Park.

If time wasn’t an issue, I would take 3rd Street — oftentimes cutting through St Peter’s cemetery, because why not? — and make a left onto the cobblestones of Delancey, stopping in at Three Bears Park, then continuing up the meandering herringbone brick sidewalk leading to Green’s and Lawrence Court, a left onto Spruce for 2 blocks, then wandering back to Lombard (wait for it!) while passing the magnificent Mother Bethel, African Methodist Episcopal Church.

I would look up at the stained glass clearstory windows, and marvel at their beauty.

The congregation, founded in 1794, is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal congregation in the nation.

We are super excited to have been selected to do the restoration of the sanctuary windows and all the woodwork throughout the church. There’s just something about those circles that captures my eye.

So far, we have only seen these windows using the telephoto lens of my iPhone, and with photographs from a drone. Nothing beats being 12 inches from the surface and actually touching it. It’s a moment of truth: Will my scraper sink into soft, rotted wood or will it merely scrape off the paint? We hope (and pray) that the wood is sound enough for us to simply do our normal restoration-level surface preparation: scraping and sanding, oil priming, wood filling, re-priming, caulking, then two coats of Sherman Williams Emerald gloss paint. The fear is if we have to recreate the wood, which is a very big “known unknown”.

In my past articles, I have talked about the conversation between us as restorers and the builders / designers who created these beautiful structures. It’s also a conversation between us and the last painter who worked on this building. For some reason they used some sort of weird solid stain versus a paint. Stains are great if you want the material to penetrate into the wood, like for a deck or piece of furniture, but stain does not create an exterior shell like an acrylic paint, which repels the weather. Woodwork like this should absolutely be protected with paint and not a stain. We want an indefensible barrier.

Choosing the right materials is one of the most important parts of this job, and then actually reading the labels and following the directions. (It’s amazing how much information you can get on the side of a can of paint or a gallon of ready patch.) First step is always to make sure the surface is clean and free of dirt, oil and loose paint. No kidding! Find the bottom of whatever it is that you are doing, then proceed from there.

So, our conversation turns towards the architecture of the church. Buildings create feeling, and the feeling one gets when one sits in the sanctuary of Mother Bethel is breathless wonder, a feeling of freedom and hope, concepts dear to the African-American experience (and to all people on planet Earth for that matter). This concept of freedom is built into our DNA, especially as Philadelphians, the place where the Declaration of Independence was written (though “all men are created equal” is a statement rife with irony considering #metoo and the pretzel logic of a slave counting as 3/5th of a human).

The freedom to choose one’s destiny, to design a soaring structure meant to capture the light of god through clearstory splendor, is at the heart of what it means to be an American.

My father-in-law just recently immigrated to the United States from Russia, coming here on a Jewish refugee program. His apartment in St. Petersburg was built at the height of the communist brutalist design era: every apartment exactly the same. It truly is impossible to tell one from another: five stories, made of concrete; no frills, just depressing Soviet design.

Ironically, St. Petersburg was originally designed and built by Italian architects. Peter the Great wanted to build a “Venice of the north”, which he largely accomplished. Then, the thought police took over and architecture was rendered neutered and purely utilitarian.

Diametrically opposed to this is Mother Bethel, an example of the freedom to express love via architecture.

It’s up to us to be the caretakers of that freedom. We maintain our buildings like we maintain our democracy: take them for granted and they break down.