Construction crews have already began construction on the elevator.
When Theresa Stahl’s nephew Billy got married at St. Anne’s Church, not everybody who showed up was there to see it.
“One of the women who was invited to the wedding — she’s been in a wheelchair her whole life — her friend came up and tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘Maryanne is outside,’ Stahl explained. “She said ‘will you make sure the couple gets this?’ And she handed me a card.”
Because the upstairs church is not handicap accessible, Maryanne couldn’t come inside the church and witness the wedding. Father Skip Miller, as well as the church’s co-chairs of its reunion committee, Stahl and Nellie Hohenstein, wanted to make sure that never happens again.
In an attempt to have its upstairs church be more conducive to hosting community events and accessible to people who can’t transport themselves up stairs, St. Anne’s Church, located on Lehigh Avenue between Memphis and Cedar streets in Kensington, has begun construction on an elevator lift, which will be able to accommodate up to three people or one wheelchair.
“We have a lot of things in the upper church and people who have a hard time climbing steps can’t get to,” Hohenstein said. For instance, there’s the church’s annual Christmas show. State Sen. Christine Tartaglione was scheduled to have a senior expo in the upstairs church on Oct. 4, but since the elevator lift likely won’t be constructed in time, the church was forced to move it to the church’s gym. Additionally, Miller stated a desire to turn the upstairs church, which can hold 1,300 people, into a place where community organizations can come, have meetings and throw events.
But that’s not even the most exciting part. Construction crews have already begun construction on the elevator. As of right now, one of the staircases the elevator will be replacing has been completely deconstructed, leaving a gaping hole where the steps once were. In that hole, the construction crew found various artifacts from long ago left underneath the stairs. Among the artifacts were a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes, A Philadelphia Rapid Transit bus ticket, a newspaper clipping, collection baskets, a purse used to transport the money collected in the collection baskets, an old clothes catalog, and, perhaps most interestingly, a bunch of old stained glass covers for the gas lighting the church used before it had electricity.
Philadelphia Rapid Transit was the transit system in Philadelphia that pre-dated SEPTA, which lasted from 1940 to 1968. The newspaper clipping featured an article about Temple University hiring Skip Wilson to be the new head coach of its baseball team. Records show that Wilson’s first year coaching the Temple Owls baseball team was in 1960, so the newspaper is likely from that time period. (Wilson went on to coach the Owls until 2005, by the way. According to an article in The Temple News, Wilson’s 1,034 wins are the most wins of any coach in the school’s history, regardless of sport).
Miller told the Star that there was a massive fire at the church in 1947. A large portion of the church had to be demolished and rebuilt as a result.
“As they were demolishing the old church, they probably just kind of used [the artifacts] as backfill,” he said.
Construction for the elevator, which costs $37,000, will be paid for by the Penn Treaty Special Services District. The church, via fundraisers, is footing the bill for the actual elevator itself, which runs about $33,500, according to Stahl.
See more pictures of the findings below:
