Mountaineer Fernweh

  In the heart of midtown Baltimore at the corner of St. Paul and Chase, the scaffolding around the church has been up sufficiently long enough that some long time residents have forgotten when it wasn't there. I can't even quite name the building that it encloses: is it the former Christ Church, the former New Refuge Deliverance Cathedral, or the still fledgling New Life Evangelical Church of Olivet Assembly, who  bought the building at auction in 2021 ?  What we do know is that the scaffold was placed there to protect the pedestrians walking by.  The church is a safety hazard. After years of battles with the city over code violations and fines, New Refuge agreed to sell the building in 2019.  The first auction sought over $1 million, and failed to find a buyer. The second auction brought in $550,000, a fairly meagre sum for a large Mount Vernon property. The buyer, Olivet Assembly, promised to remove the scaffolding by the end of 2021 and install a new, thriving congregation.

  In prior Church Series posts I documented two churches that have been preserved or restored to their Colonial-era appearance. In this post, we look at a building that dates to 1743, but whose layers of history carry into the 1970's. St. Thomas Church, Garrison Forest, was created from St. Paul's Parish of Baltimore City as a chapel of ease in 1742. Saint Paul's was 12 miles to the southeast, and the parish boundaries of the time included most of what is now Baltimore County. With a growing population to the northwest, it was believed a new house of worship was needed. By 1745, a new church had been erected and granted parish status.   St. Thomas was built of brick imported from England, constructed in a Flemish bond pattern that was typical of the time. Originally a 56' x 36' structure, the original interior included box pews, a pulpit on the north wall, and small chancel on the east end. The windows of leaded glass have largely been preserved, though the structur