Whitman Bailey Selection for February An artist's glimpse of Broad St. looking east

An artist's glimpse of Broad St. looking east

Download article of February 6, 1926

Visualize a view from the intersection of Summer and Broad streets looking east.  The First Presbyterian church in its second incarnation – the first one was a wooden church later destroyed by fire – stood at 74 Broad Street, where the Burlington Coat Factory building is situated now, formerly the Caldor Department Store owned by husband and wife team Carl and Dorothy Bennett, and its absence still bemourned by many.

The church existed at that location until the new sanctuary at 1101 Bedford Street was dedicated in March 1958.  The so-called Fish Church is an architecturally famous building and made it even into this writer's copy of a German architectural lexicon as an example of Plastischer Stil, the equivalent of Brutalist style.  More on the building.  She also remembers the very windy day when the "steeple" was lowered by helicopter onto the top of the carrillon tower, a heart-stopping event observed from her office window …

Beyond the church there can vaguely be seen, or rather imagined, the Ferguson Library building before its expansion as described in the above article.

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Whitman Bailey Collection