Most of the scaffolding that covered Trinity Cathedral in Downtown is gone, but there is still much work to be done before the 120-year-old landmark is again presentable to the public.
Since June, workers from Carnegie-based Young Restoration Co. have worked diligently to remove more than a century’s worth of grime, soot and acid runoff from the cathedral’s blackened exterior. It looks like the cleaners, who have been using baking soda and water to wash away the industrial muck of decades, are close to making the holiday deadline.
If you are in Pittsburgh and haven’t been Downtown to see the transformation, please make the effort. It’s placed a great strain on our provost and the congregation and now we want to celebrate what has been achieved with the wider community.
I’ve been to their cathedral and it really is quite nice.
[i] Slightly edited by elf. [/i]
I’ll let the elf edit me if he wishes (since I’m responding to what was edited of #2) but as a member of the congregation let me state what was discussed at our annual parish meeting this Sunday.
We are a small congregation (given the size of our building) composed of a very diverse bunch of reappraisers and reasserters, who together understand that much of our service to Christ involves ministry to people who do live in our neighborhood, either because they are homeless or because they only work in the Downtown area.
There are reappraisers who have stayed with this community throughout the recent stormy period of the cathedral’s history who are very dear to me and who have been truly sacrificial in giving of themselves to a community whose leaders have been clear throughout that they support the bishop.
We are endeavoring to embrace Bishop Duncan’s vision, voiced at convention, that we should, in time, become a community that can serve BOTH the residual Episcopal community and the Anglican successor body in Pittsburgh. At our meeting, several people talked of how we might together offer an iconic vision of how Episcopalians and Anglicans can work past the divisions of the present time in a more Christian way than seems currently to be on offer.
If either group is forced by circumstances to leave the structure, everyone will lose and the long-term viability of the cathedral will be in jeopardy. The more doctrinaire on both sides, please take note.
[i] The elf edited the negative one-liner only.[/i]
In the second paragraph I should have said “who do NOT live in the neighborhood.”
Peter Frank, the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s communications director, posted a fine slideshow on Flickr in early April and updated it in late July.
Looking forward to seeing this when I’m in the ‘Burgh later this month.