Conversion Theory

 

This story, which I'd been following from behind the scenes for quite some time, finally broke while I was away this summer. The building housing Woodland Presbyterian Church, the congregation I was part of  from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s, was sold off a few years back and it is now official that it will be converted to luxury apartments.

I cannot overstate how meaningful that location is to me and how special that place was to so many. Church is, unfortunately, so segregated and so sterile, whereas Woodland was so diverse and so real. Amy and I got married there, and I attended many other weddings there, as well as many funerals and worship services and potluck dinners. It is, truly, what I think church should look like, and I haven't been able to attain it before or since.

It's natural to lament the closure of a church and the conversion of its physical facilities. With religious attendance in decline, this is happening all throughout the country. In Philadelphia, this story layers on many other dynamics, namely: the relationship between the community and the main institution in the area, the University of Pennsylvania (which entertained the possibility of buying and using the site before ultimately deciding to decline); and the specter of gentrification as a house of worship welcoming to rich and poor now gives way to housing at a relatively high price point.

Nostalgia has a powerful pull on us, as it should. I personally ache as I think about how important that place was to my life in so many ways, juxtaposed with it being repurposed for something completely different. Nevertheless, change is inevitable, and the marketplace speaks the loudest. Indeed, I know for a fact that those involved in the recent stewardship of the site tried desperately to find a buyer who would retain the site's core function as a place of worship. 

In the end, more housing is a very good thing for our neighborhood, and one shouldn't understate how positive this is. Even more significant is that adaptive reuse is far better than demolition; honestly, it is a huge stretch to retain the structure than to start anew, so I consider this to be a big win for preservationists and for those of us for whom the building means so much to us psychologically. 

I think it's still sad news. But it could've been far sadder. And there's a lot of happiness in there too.