{"id":1799,"date":"2016-02-27T21:54:31","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T01:54:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/?p=1799"},"modified":"2016-02-29T22:52:03","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T03:52:03","slug":"the-grief-and-questions-over-st-agathas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mindfulwalker.com\/wordpress\/beyond-gotham\/the-grief-and-questions-over-st-agathas","title":{"rendered":"The Grief and Questions Over St. Agatha\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"

As they dismantle the stones, roof, and interior of the former St. Agatha Roman Catholic Church, the demolition crew is taking apart memories, history, art, and part of a community\u2019s fabric, to be replaced by a nondescript pharmacy in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania. At the corner of Spring Avenue and Fifth Street in the downtown, the CVS Pharmacy will be right across from another national-chain drugstore. The demolition company isn\u2019t to blame. It\u2019s doing the work of a large corporation. But if stones could wail, these surely would.<\/p>\n

During this past week, a crew using a jackhammer, aerial boom, and other equipment has been taking down a structure that a congregation built nearly a century ago and dedicated in 1918. Italian immigrant stonemasons shaped the stones of the building and an outdoor grotto. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s one place in a town of 7,740 residents in Western Pennsylvania, hundreds of miles away from dozens of properties in New York City that have been facing their becoming vulnerable to the same fate \u2013 including a church in the Bronx; a cemetery that dates back more than 250 years in Staten Island; the monumental building on Manhattan\u2019s West Side that first powered the New York City subway in its first days; and an 18th century farmhouse in Gravesend, Brooklyn. Earlier this week, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) considered a backlog of 95 sites, prioritized 30 of them for historic landmark designation, and took most of them off its calendar without judging the merits<\/a>. (Mindfulwalker.com plans to follow up on the ramifications of the LPC\u2019s decisions in a separate post soon.) They had been on the LPC\u2019s backlog list for years, 85 percent for more than two decades while the commission considered other places for designation. <\/p>\n

The historic and beautiful church building in a Western Pennsylvania town and dozens of places in a city of 8 million are connected by meaning, memory, significance, and art. Once someone razes them, they\u2019re lost forever to a neighborhood and city or town, alive only in recollections, historical documents, and images. On a day when I was researching about the New York City hearing, I saw a photo of St. Agatha\u2019s that an Ellwood City resident had taken when the crew had ripped off part of the bell tower, leaving a jagged edge on the tower. It set off a feeling of deep mournfulness.<\/p>\n

Since then, as I\u2019ve learned, I\u2019m far from alone in that mourning for a place that is disappearing in my home area. It doesn\u2019t mean that every older building should be saved, but many people know intuitively, quite deeply, and, most of the time, correctly when some interests in society have gone too far in destroying what should be saved and allowed to live on. In the face of huge commercial interests, such as a national drugstore chain, citizens can feel powerless. Still, they know, in their minds and souls, that an incalculable loss is taking place.<\/p>\n

When someone tears down a historic site like the former St. Agatha\u2019s, which the Pittsburgh Diocese closed in 2007, it rips a hole in the community and takes something from those whose lives have been intertwined with this place. As St. Agatha\u2019s comes down, people have come to bear witness to its destruction, taking many pictures. They and others who couldn\u2019t be there have expressed intense feelings \u2013 horror, sadness, anger, confusion \u2013 and have written online of their memories, in great detail.<\/p>\n

\"St.<\/a>