Mount Vernon United Methodist receives stunning transformation

[KB7DQH]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-kelly-column-hampden-20110909,0,3436724.column

Jacques Kelly

8:08 p.m. EDT, September 9, 2011
My heart sank the morning I toured the scorched interior of Hampden's Mount Vernon United Methodist Church. On that Monday three years ago, what had been a postcard-perfect Victorian stone chapel was a heap of smashed stained glass, wrecked pews and charred timbers.

I returned this week and discovered a resplendent Mount Vernon. No longer a church, it is now the home of the computer business Chesapeake Systems.

It seemed highly improbable that its transformation from an old-fashioned Methodist textile mill workers' chapel could be so successful. I saw gleaming hickory floors and new stained-glass windows and restored old ones.

Even the old Moller pipe organ remained, with a hymnal on its music rack. 

The Sunday school classroom was a now conference room. The basement was full of intently working technicians.

What I saw was more than a loving restoration of a Hampden landmark. The much-revered old church has a new purpose in the digital era. It seemed to be humming and full of life. Who would have thought that digital media production, networking and storage could find a cozy home here?

This was the last thing I would have imagined that depressing day when I saw the damage a lightning bolt had initiated, igniting the roof and the upper reaches of the 1879 stone-and-frame building at 33rd and Chestnut.

Dozens of firefighters stopped the flames by training streams of water inside the church, which sat in ruins for a few weeks before being resaturated by heavy autumn rains that year.

That August morning in 2008, members of the congregation were gamely trying to rescue a few waterlogged hymnals and clothing they'd collected for a new store housed in the church basement. I wished them well but thought privately that this dwindling band of parishioners would never return to their pews.

That was to be their fate. They voted to spend $200,000 of insurance money on a roof, but their numbers had grown too small to sustain a congregation. The little band voted to merge and move on, leaving behind their sanctuary, the place of their baptisms, confirmations and marriages. It could not have been an easy decision, but when they return for a peek, the results will not disappoint.

I spoke with George Brecht, Chesapeake's board chairman and a part-owner of the business. He said his firm, which was growing, had been located in the nearby Mill Center, one of the former 19th-century textile mills whose workers once made up the backbone of this church's membership. He wanted to expand and saw the opportunity the ruined church offered.

He paid $280,000 for the building and spent more than twice that amount on renovation. Anything in the original church that could be saved was put back in use.

He even has thoughts about getting the old organ playing again, but that carries a $60,000 cost.

He and partner Mark Dent moved the business in over the summer. Their official completion is slated for later this month.

jacques.kelly@baltsun.com

This news story is  intriguing at so many different levels...

Eric
KB7DQH