"I work with a member of the church and he took me on a tour of the old building just before they renovated. On the 8th street side of the church there are steep steps that lead down to a basement or boiler room. There are several OLD and I mean OLD, huge steam electric generators that are no long in use. These generators are about 4 feet wide 8 feet long 4 feet tall. The room is about 10 feet by 40 feet and it houses two vintage steam driven electric generators dating from the early 40's. They still look to be in pretty good shape for there age. The massive boiler that supplied these generators has long since been salvaged for its copper and aluminum. But you can still see how big this boiler was from its base where it sat supplying the steam for the generators. The wall is also blackened from what appeared to be a fire at on[e] point. Just passed were the boiler sat is another smaller generator that also looks to be from early forties.

On the Welsh side of the church there are another set of steep steps that lead down to another basement or boiler room. The two basements are independent of each other. This basement had a smaller steam generator in it and also housed a high voltage power distribution room which was gutted.

Then came the real surprise my friend told me that there was another huge generator the sat up in the rafters. Well I looked at him like he was crazy and smiled in disbelief. It was then when he took me to take the ladder and place it up in a hole they had in the ceiling in a large supply room toward the front of the building. I called him on his bluff and to my surprise there sitting on the rafters was yet another LARGE electric steam generator with all the pluming still connected to it.

It should be noted that all the steam generators were placed in there respected location during the time of the building construction. It is impossible to remove ANY of these generators without destroying the current structure.

I'll try to get pictures the next time I go back, but pictures don't do it justice."

Thanks to
Rich Bey
8/19/2006