Over the years, several readers have asked us about the northwest corner of E. Moyamensing & Washington. If you've ever passed by this corner, perhaps you too have wondered about the odd, windowless building that stands about thirty feet tall and looks like a miniature version of the tower from which Rapunzel let down her hair. It may interest you to know that a church once stood here.
The M.E. Mariner's Bethel church was built in 1873. It was one of two churches in the neighborhood that was specifically for seamen, a group that was extremely well represented in this neighborhood in the late 1800s. As work along the river dried up, so to speak, the church pictured above persisted as the only mariner's church for several decades until it was demolished, we think in the late 1960s.
Who would demolish such a building, you may ask? And what would they replace it with, you may wonder? The first question, we can answer with great certainty. In 1966, the Philadelphia Electric Company, a precursor to PECO, purchased the church and the land it sat on. As for the second question, we confess we aren't sure. We're pretty confident that the building currently standing on the corner contains some manner of electrical equipment, and that equipment surely helps keep the lights on in Queen Village and Pennsport. Is it a transformer? A substation? A series of tubes and switches? We have no idea. But it's safe to say that if PECO owns it, we're probably better off that whatever's inside there is doing its job. Why the equipment is contained in such an odd looking structure, we have no idea. But we do kind of like the way the building imitates the architectural lines of the missing church, even if it's a very poor imitation.
Does anyone know any additional history on the mariner's church that once stood here? In researching it, we largely came up empty. Any more info about this corner would be much appreciated.