It all started with this advertisement of a church for sale in downtown Lewisburg.
We had driven by this beautiful building for over a decade, we knew it was a single family residence and wondered about how pretty it might be inside. Now it was for sale.
We had moved our family with six young children to Lewisburg PA in 2011 to provide a better place for them to grow up. Lewisburg is the Norman Rockwell painting come to life and we have never had a second thought about uprooting all our lives and moving everyone here . We wanted to live downtown but there are not many homes that can accommodate a family of eight, so we bought an older duplex in 2010 and Timothy moved out to PA a year before the rest of us so he could set up his electronic controls business, and he also started gutting the house we bought to turn it into a charming home for our family with enough bedrooms and bathrooms and showers for all of our six children. He took the center wall out of the duplex, brought the front doors together, joined the kitchens in the back, created a new staircase, and importantly installed new plumbing, new electrical, spray foam insulation, A/C, windows, pretty much rebuilt this lovely home from the inside out while maintaining the charm of this classic building.
We had just finished the last part of that ten plus year project in spring of 2021. We are blessed to be friends with a Master Craftsman who first of all refinished the beautiful front doors…
And then built the doors to finally finish the vestibule with another amazing artisan friend who created the leaded glass.
We had spent twelve years rebuilding this glorious home, crown molding in almost every room, bedrooms for all the six children, lovely tilework done in the showers with collectible medieval style tiles, flowering trees out front and a beautiful garden, and finally these beautiful doors.
We were going to live in this gorgeous home forever. BUT – the St Johns Street church was for sale.
We called our realtor and went to see it.
The listing shared that there was only one bedroom, no kitchen, loads of bathrooms (obviously it had been a church so they needed bathrooms for congregants). There were eight toilets and a urinal,. Not exactly the kind of home to move a family into, turn key. But then we got to see the inside of the building.
We previewed this amazing building, (take note of the moose head in the first photo). We were completely overwhelmed. Being there on a Sunday at about 1:00, the sun was glowing through the western facing eight stained glass windows that encircle the back of the building and there was a kaleidoscope of color splaying out over the walls. It was absolutely stunning. Of course, we had *finally* finished the last piece on our beautiful St George Street house, we could have just relaxed and enjoyed our beautiful home there.
Or we could start a new adventure.
Although we needed lots of bedrooms and bathrooms when we had six children living at home, and we totally got that covered at the beautiful St George house, now our children were all growing up and going to college and moving away and getting married and buying houses in Pittsburgh.
We were so happy that everyone came home for Thanksgiving and brought friends and more family, but our dining room that had seemed so spacious when the children were smaller was a bit of a tight squeeze for 16 people for Thanksgiving dinner. Same for Christmas, little children don’t take up all that much space, but not so much when they grow to be 6’4″ at age 19, and happily with more people joining us with two weddings that summer, the living room and dining room were just not enough space for everyone.
It was justification enough for us to put in an offer for St. John’s church in April of 2021. We envisioned the enormous Christmas tree we could place at the gorgeous fireplace, space for loads of family opening gifts by the fire, Thanksgiving dinner under the fabulous chandelier over the round table that seated at least a dozen and a half and space in that room for another table of another dozen friends and family. We saw weddings in our future, we could host Showers and other parties in this glorious space. As heart breaking as it was to sell our beautiful St. George Street house that we had invested so much heart and effort into, we didn’t need six bedrooms and five bathrooms any more, what we needed was space to bring everyone home for family celebrations. Tim jokingly refers to our move as “downsizing”, six bedrooms down to one.
History of St. John’s Church
But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me share some of the history of St. John’s United Church of Christ. It originally began as the German Reformed Church in Lewisburg in 1824 and eventually became the First Reformed Church of Lewisburg. The lot at the corner of St. Johns and North 3rd Street was purchased for $500, paid for in two payments of $250 each on April 1st 1847 and April 1st 1848. By Jan 8, 1848, the new church had been built. Sermons were shared in both English and German,to the congregation of about one hundred people.
Some things change, some things stay the same. In the mid 1800’s the congregation was reduced, due partly to epidemics in the community. From the church history, ” There was good attention paid to the preached word, but owing to the bad conditions of the roads and the fact that the small pox was prevailing at the time in our town, the audiences were not as large as they would have under more favorable circumstances.” Hm, having experienced closing our churches due to Covid I totally identify with that statement. Even now the attendance at many churches is not what it had been pre-Covid.
It seems the congregants from East Lewisburg and Montandon were a bit peeved that they had to pay a toll to cross the old wooden bridge at Lewisburg, but in the fall of 1900 someone with connections arranged for them to go to services with free access on the toll bridge.
I find it remarkable that the congregation had a beautiful brick church that at the turn of the 20th century, they chose to tear down and instead build a new bigger church, but such is the nature of a thriving congregation. You can still see the masonry from the original church in our basement. The new church was built on the same spot, but the new building is wider than the original foundation.
The new building was described in a newspaper article from July 1903 as being “an Old English perpendicular Gothic, with a touch of German feeling”. The interior was “all of solid red oak, golden oak tinge, rubbed down with oil and pumice stone”. The stained glass windows came from a New York firm that for many years was one of the leading designers for Tiffany. Mr. Andrew Carnegie donated $1000 towards the purchase of the organ, half the full price. Many church members helped in the tearing down of the old church and building of the new one. “Even some of the women labored several evenings at the disagreeable task of cleaning bricks”.
It took quite some time to finish paying for the beautiful new building. In 1907, they published the names of those who had contributed, perhaps to guilt everyone else into making a donation. By 1909, the congregation was assessed a fee, valued according to their tax assessment. Finally by 1915 the debt of $25,000 was paid off.
Horse stalls were built at the back of the property along the alley. The church bell rang formally for the last time in 1937, the sound was muffled because the bell had cracked. But it was rung again on V.E. Day 1945, “the Pastor feeling with the nation the gratitude for the end of one phase of the war”.
Of course, the congregation started running out of space again. Much work was done on the basement in the 1950’s which included digging out enough dirt so that the entire area was lowered by 15″. Now there were loads of Sunday school classes happening there!
The sanctuary enjoyed new lighting in 1961, and the “overflow” room was also full up with congregants.
We inherited the architect drawings from 1951 that show that the church needed to expand their space and thought about putting a new building in the church parking lot.
I think it is neat that they had planned for a space for the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts to meet. On the other hand, I’m not sure what was supposed to happen to the semi-circle of stained glass windows at the back of the church. In any case, the addition did not happen.
Parking was a problem in downtown Lewisburg even back then. At some point, the print shop across the street burned and was torn down and the church bought that empty lot for extra parking. We are certainly glad the empty lot came with the property as we also need that extra space for parking, not to mention construction vehicles.
By the 1970’s, repairs and updates were needed again, especially with the church looking towards celebrating its 150th anniversary in 1974. It seems that everyone helped out, raising money via chicken barbeques and making hundreds of donuts in the church basement kitchen, and also washing the Tiffany windows and refinishing the floors and pews.
The St Johns congregation was vibrant and active and had again outgrown this space. From my conversations with a former congregant, it was a very hard decision to sell this building so that a new church could be built elsewhere that could accommodate the congregation. Apparently at least a couple votes were taken of the membership before there was an approval to sell this building and build another, and it all came to pass.
When the church came on the market in about 1988, there were still railroad tracks running down St. John’s street. This was the line that eventually became the rails to trails path that we all enjoy today in 2022. It was a long process for Jim Clark, the Antiques dealer who first purchased the church, to jump through all the hoops for this to finally happen. He had to meet with various church leadership going way up the line, and also had to work to maintain the integrity of the interior architecture.
The church wanted to keep several of the stained glass windows that showed religious scenes, and that was appropriate. Those stained glass panels are now on display at St Johns United Church of Christ on Buffalo Road outside of Lewisburg, backlit, and they are beautiful. Jim Clark replaced those glass pieces with a pretty opaque glass.
However then it seems things started to get a little out of hand. Some members of the church wanted to take all the lighting fixtures.
Pictured here are just four of dozens of beautiful fixtures throughout the building, and Jim negotiated to keep all the original light fixtures. Then the church committee wanted to take out the ceiling fans. Jim explained it would be better for them to let him pay extra to keep the extant ceiling fans and they could install new ones in their new church, rather than move the decades old fans, even if they had been a bequest from a church family from years ago.
This went on and on, with Jim finally just keeping a running list of all the original church infrastructure he was keeping intact by spending more money. I imagine the last straw was when someone had the brilliant idea for a fundraiser: disassemble the stained glass windows and sell off the pieces of glass as mementos! Good grief! Thankfully, Jim talked them out of that as well and also wrote a check for the couple/few thousand dollars they hoped to make from the proposed fundraiser.
This building was a very different place than it is now when Jim bought it in 1989 and started to work on it. I am so happy to have pix from the early days that he shared with us.
So many things had to happen! The Sanctuary was built with a slope in the floor towards the altar, so that flooring had to be leveled to be able to use the space. Several stained glass windows were taken to the new church and had to be replaced. I’m not really sure what happened to the organ, but that space was vacated as well as the altar area and it’s stained glass window.
He built a fabulous fireplace where the altar had been
The sanctuary had been sloped and the floor had to be leveled.
A few of the stained glass were removed and are now on display at St. John’s Church on Buffalo Road. Jim replaced them with an opaque glass that matches the lighting fixtures that remain.
He built a bar where had been a passageway to the side door and the Pastor’s office, and painted and repaired the plaster. It was quite the overhaul.
In building the loft in the middle room, the bannister that had circled the choir was installed to round that area.
Bookshelves and a fireplace were built on the interior wall of the back section of the building, also a catwalk and more bookshelves that connected it all to the loft.
This space was being amazingly transformed. We so admire the vision that Jim had for how to make this space into something very special.
By the time we saw it all in early 2021, we could totally see our large family enjoying this beautiful place. At the time we had no plans to move from the lovely home we had built on St George Street and enjoyed living in over the last dozen years but still, this gorgeous building was in our hearts.
Spring 2021
The Sunday afternoon when we first visited my thought was, we have driven by this beautiful property for years and always wondered about what it might look like inside. It is on the market, let’s take a look. Tim walked in with the listing agent. It so happens that we had just watched the movie “Murder by Death” where “cow on wall talks!!” is stated by Peter Sellers and Truman Capote, voicing the moose, says “It’s a moose you imbecile!!” And as we walked into the Great Hall there was a giant moose head that dominated the room (amongst probably 50 other mounts in the building). Tim said to Jim’s agent, “of course we are putting in an offer but the moose has to stay”. Sigh. We had discussed nothing and I personally had no intention of moving anywhere especially since we had just finished the last important beautiful feature on the St George house.
Leave it to Tim. Of anything in the building (and there were thousands of amazing antiques) Tim decided the moose head had to stay. There was a Bison head over the fireplace ( I’m a Bucknell grad as is our daughter, and it would have been cool to have keep that) but Tim picked the moose. Eventually the moose head was literally included in the contract to buy the building. Theodore, as he is now known, has developed quite a following. I choose not to watch as Tim climbs a very tall ladder and puts different hats on him to celebrate various holidays and special occasions.
On our first visit to the church in March 2021, we felt like bulls in a china shop trying to negotiate our way through this beautiful building filled with amazing antiques, tying not to break anything,. We walked past the enormous round table under an amazing chandelier and got to the far section of the building which is ringed with stained glass windows, and the westward facing sunlight was pouring in and and it seemed like a kaleidoscope was infusing the room with color.
Long story shorter, we put in an offer to purchase the church in April 2021 and gave the owner six months before closing so he would have time to sell/auction/move to a new place the thousands of antiques here. We started making plans which included building a kitchen in the back circle of gorgeous windows … and in doing those measurements in the warmer month of June realized we would need to do some substantial work installing a/c throughout the building. It gets intolerably hot in here in the summer months.
We have done many projects in the last several yers but probably the biggest was having a local company, Bucks, install A/C throughout. There had been a couple splits already installed, one in our daughter’s room (formerly the Pastor’s office and now the guest room). The other was in the Library area, but they were inadequate to manage the building. Now, with A/C installed throughout we can keep it comfortable everywhere. We typically don’t worry too much about cooling or heating the Great Hall/ former Sanctuary unless we are hosting people gathering there, so the cost of keeping things cool is not exorbitant.
Currently we host a medieval fighter practice in the Great Hall every Sunday afternoon and welcome Arts and Sciences friends in the Library with a couple/three dozen people in attendance. When the weather is exceptionally nice we will fight outside in the parking lot across the street (that came with the purchase of the church). Come join us any time.! We also typically host a demo during the Lewisburg Arts Festival in Mat, We set up a couple pavilions and show off the heavy weapons and rapier fighting that we do in the SCA (Society of Creative Anachronists), as well as share much of the A&S activities our friends are involved with via this interesting group.
Ghosts
So much has happened in the glorious building in the last 120 years .. weddings, baptisms, funerals, etc. Our first night here we slept on a futon on the floor in the Great Hall (Sanctuary). I started having a dream that there was someone tap dancing in the hallway, I could hear the “tap tap tap”. I thought it was perhaps a tap dancing ghost, why not? I got up to investigate and sadly, there was no ghost, but our two youngest sons were sleeping in the next room over and one was awake and tapping on his computer, which with the acoustics here, echoed throughout the building. So no ghost that time, not to say it still might happen. I interacted with a ghost at our house in NJ about 15 years ago and I’m glad she chose to visit me. That’s a whole other story.
The New Kitchen
As alluded to earlier, one of the first big projects was to build a gorgeous kitchen in the back half of the building, the semi circular space surrounded by a circle of stained glass windows. Here are some photos of this work by Robert Bittner, a Master woodworker who happens to be a good friend. (Who else would take on this kind of project!)
Cabinetry was built along the back wall underneath the stained glass windows so that they would look like vestment chests and not look totally out of place, but with the stain and the wood matching what is already here, they blend in.
And of course the cats helped.
Countertops arrived. Watching them be lowered into place was worrying, but none of the awkward granite pieces broke.
We had previously purchased an indoor grill that was installed in the kitchen island and demanded a ridiculously heavy hood. That was a project to install.
Our Church Home 