Monday, March 7, 2011

Missing Pulpit

May I take a bye week on Mosaic Monday?

Instead I want to present this picture, which Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes is letting me use. This is an old photo of the redwood pulpit of St. Peters Episcopal Church, built in 1884. I believe the pulpit dates from that year as well.

It's MISSING! Someone (or some group) took it out of the church in the last fifty years. The church sat at Harbor View Cemetery in San Pedro; actually, it's still there. For a bit.

As I wrote about in this piece on Patch, the 127-year-old church is going to be moved in the coming months to a quieter home at Green Hills Memorial Park.
There, it will be restored, enjoyed, and kept relatively safe from vandals or souvenir-pickers.

In its present position at the corner of San Pedro's oldest cemetery, St Peters shares space with regular crew of homeless folks who sleep behind it. They're not the problem, though.

It seems since 1956 when the church was first moved to this location (it's third home), it was used for weddings and even regular musical theater events.

That's a picture of St. Peters at right. The stained glass windows have been removed and are being restored; metal grill screens are in their place.

Eventually, the church fell into disuse. Now, the church is padlocked but otherwise unprotected.

Somewhere in that timeline, 1956 to 2011, items went missing--most notably this lectern/pulpit, carved by an old shipbuilding hand in the 19th century.

If anyone's seen it in a backyard, thrift store, home, on Antiques Roadshow or even in another church...we'd really like to have it back. Please?

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