Memories: The Ramps

We have three ramps at St. John’s: the parking lot to the parish house, the parish house to the garden, and the parish house to the church.

When I moved here in 1973, we had a folding ramp that rested in the corner of the parish hall and could be unfolded and inserted through a doorway—that has since disappeared—from that hall into the sitting room. While probably not used often, this could at least have gotten a wheelchair as far into the church as the sitting room.

But this is a story about the long ramp in the hallway that separates our church and All Saints Chapel from the parish house. You likely would assume that there is an old stairway underneath that brown-carpeted slope, and that is correct.

Anyone who first came to St. John’s in the past two or three decades may see the parish as one very large, old building, but both of our buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Here’s the gist of the story: Yes, the basic architecture, and especially the stone masonry and slate roofing, are so well matched that the two structures appear to be one. But the parish house was built more than 30 years after the church building was completed. And the original stairs that would have been where this ramp now exists were stone and were outdoors, matching the stairs at the other end of the chapel.