The Presbyterians Meet in Raupp Hall
Ecorse Advertiser
March 4, 1937
By John Wall
After a seven months absence from the home fireside while Jefferson Avenue was widened, the congregation of the Ecorse Presbyterian Church for the last few Sundays has been attending services in the church itself. The reopening service will be held Sunday.
Driven from their worship by the widening of West Jefferson Avenue, a widening which has had a tremendous influence upon the village, the congregation in the interim occupied the only available hall in the village, now known as Raupp Hall. Its use was donated free of charge by the Michigan Steel Social & Relief Association.
If there should be any basis in fact for the theory often expounded by many American writers that the brick or wooden walls of a building should absorb into themselves trails of the characters of their occupants or a brick or wooden walls of a building should absorb some of the characteristics previously interpreted to the encircling walls – what a weird combination there must have been established in that old Raupp Hall – judging from the many occupations that have been pursued within its precincts – and what effect may it not have had on its transient occupants?
Something of that feeling has been imparted to the Reverend Leonard Duckett, pastor of the Presbyterian Church.
“It used to give me quite a start to lead the congregation in prayer, then open my eyes and see the fierce gleaming eyes of a first class Halloween cat blazing down upon me from the wall as they did the morning after the last Halloween dance. And it was disconcerting too, to have the decorations of witches and brooms and other unearthly symbols in the House of the Lord,” he said.
Even more disconcerting, the thought, was the holding of a church service in the aroma of stale beer left over from a party the night before; likewise, the sight of a half dozen empty half barrels, marshaled neatly against the back wall of the hall, smote against his eyes as he raised them from reading the text for the services.
But perhaps the most potent factor of the lot was not made clear to the Reverend Duckett as he was not about when Lefty Clark held sway over the premises which until recently the Presbyterians had used weekly as a church. That was left to a few members of the congregation who in other years might have ascended that narrow flight of stairs to the assembly room through a pseudo cigar store and passed between two rows of hidden eyes closely scrutinizing every person who approached, and perhaps these few members faintly expected when going to the church services to have to step up on a little platform and be deftly “patted won’ or “finished’ for concealed weapons and have to say the right words in order to get through steel doors swinging outward.
And it is not without the bounds of reason to suppose that the same members might have wondered as church people might often wonder about affairs utterly extraneous to the church, whether there might not be in attendance at these Sunday morning meetings, other ghostly communicants, peering down from balconies which no longer line the walls as they used to, which sharp eyes guardsmen patrolled them or whether ghostly crap tables, half a dozen of them, might not have been pushed back from the center of the floor and the faint clicking of the dice, once so dominant in that place, have been stifled for the services – whether the genteel “congregations” which assembled there long ago.
Yes, the presence of church services in Raupp’s Hall must have imparted some considerable shame to the patrons covering the walls of the old hall and it makes one wonder what an imaginative person could see if he should scrape from the ceiling some of the discolorations there, infused into the beams by acrid fumes of cigar smoke and stale beer, the reek of whiskey, the heavy odor of massed humans, perhaps deepened by shout of winners, the cries of losers, music of a dance band or the sound of a reverent hymn being raised by devout worshippers-if he should take these scrapings, put them in a bottle and distill them.
Would he see again in the vapor emerging from the retort a long procession of the gamblers, the racketeers, honest steel workers, pleasure bound and the devout worshippers, Bible in hand, in short, all the folks who have frequented the place from its inception?
Probably not.
At any rate, the new church is nearing completion, slowly, and the building fund is rising, also slowly, to complete it. Another thousand dollars in the fund Reverend Duckett says, and there will never again be any need for going into Raupp’s or any one else’s hall for church services.
The rebuilt church will rise upon its new foundations, and the members of the congregation will leave the old Raupp’s Hall to its prescribed function, providing a place for recreation and further gathering its misty memories.
March 4, 1937
By John Wall
After a seven months absence from the home fireside while Jefferson Avenue was widened, the congregation of the Ecorse Presbyterian Church for the last few Sundays has been attending services in the church itself. The reopening service will be held Sunday.
Driven from their worship by the widening of West Jefferson Avenue, a widening which has had a tremendous influence upon the village, the congregation in the interim occupied the only available hall in the village, now known as Raupp Hall. Its use was donated free of charge by the Michigan Steel Social & Relief Association.
If there should be any basis in fact for the theory often expounded by many American writers that the brick or wooden walls of a building should absorb into themselves trails of the characters of their occupants or a brick or wooden walls of a building should absorb some of the characteristics previously interpreted to the encircling walls – what a weird combination there must have been established in that old Raupp Hall – judging from the many occupations that have been pursued within its precincts – and what effect may it not have had on its transient occupants?
Something of that feeling has been imparted to the Reverend Leonard Duckett, pastor of the Presbyterian Church.
“It used to give me quite a start to lead the congregation in prayer, then open my eyes and see the fierce gleaming eyes of a first class Halloween cat blazing down upon me from the wall as they did the morning after the last Halloween dance. And it was disconcerting too, to have the decorations of witches and brooms and other unearthly symbols in the House of the Lord,” he said.
Even more disconcerting, the thought, was the holding of a church service in the aroma of stale beer left over from a party the night before; likewise, the sight of a half dozen empty half barrels, marshaled neatly against the back wall of the hall, smote against his eyes as he raised them from reading the text for the services.
But perhaps the most potent factor of the lot was not made clear to the Reverend Duckett as he was not about when Lefty Clark held sway over the premises which until recently the Presbyterians had used weekly as a church. That was left to a few members of the congregation who in other years might have ascended that narrow flight of stairs to the assembly room through a pseudo cigar store and passed between two rows of hidden eyes closely scrutinizing every person who approached, and perhaps these few members faintly expected when going to the church services to have to step up on a little platform and be deftly “patted won’ or “finished’ for concealed weapons and have to say the right words in order to get through steel doors swinging outward.
And it is not without the bounds of reason to suppose that the same members might have wondered as church people might often wonder about affairs utterly extraneous to the church, whether there might not be in attendance at these Sunday morning meetings, other ghostly communicants, peering down from balconies which no longer line the walls as they used to, which sharp eyes guardsmen patrolled them or whether ghostly crap tables, half a dozen of them, might not have been pushed back from the center of the floor and the faint clicking of the dice, once so dominant in that place, have been stifled for the services – whether the genteel “congregations” which assembled there long ago.
Yes, the presence of church services in Raupp’s Hall must have imparted some considerable shame to the patrons covering the walls of the old hall and it makes one wonder what an imaginative person could see if he should scrape from the ceiling some of the discolorations there, infused into the beams by acrid fumes of cigar smoke and stale beer, the reek of whiskey, the heavy odor of massed humans, perhaps deepened by shout of winners, the cries of losers, music of a dance band or the sound of a reverent hymn being raised by devout worshippers-if he should take these scrapings, put them in a bottle and distill them.
Would he see again in the vapor emerging from the retort a long procession of the gamblers, the racketeers, honest steel workers, pleasure bound and the devout worshippers, Bible in hand, in short, all the folks who have frequented the place from its inception?
Probably not.
At any rate, the new church is nearing completion, slowly, and the building fund is rising, also slowly, to complete it. Another thousand dollars in the fund Reverend Duckett says, and there will never again be any need for going into Raupp’s or any one else’s hall for church services.
The rebuilt church will rise upon its new foundations, and the members of the congregation will leave the old Raupp’s Hall to its prescribed function, providing a place for recreation and further gathering its misty memories.