Dr. Fife's House
Writing a weekly column, even one as trivial as Water Under the Bridge,
presents a number of interesting challenges. Sometimes it is very easy for
me to come up with an appropriate subject. Sometimes I can take advantage of
a regular format, like my fifty six year old diary summaries. Other times I
feel uneasy for a while until I settle upon my subject.
This week, just as I began to feel uneasy, I found a message on my answering
machine. "They are cutting down the trees at Dr. Fife's house! Better get
over there and take some pictures, if you are going to write a column about
it!"
For a few months there have been rumors that Bethany Presbyterian Church
wanted to purchase the property on Washington Avenue, adjacent to their
manse, which includes the venerable red-brick mansion that old timers know
as "Dr. Fife's House". The newspaper reported that the sale was consumated,
for $310,000. At one point we heard that it would be converted into a center
for young persons; at another, a center for older persons. More disquieting
was the possibility that the mansion would be demolished and replaced by a
parking lot.
Being a card-carrying Preservationist, I am always concerned to learn that
some old landmark is destined for the wrecking ball. I still feel sad each
time I drive down Bank Street and see the apartment building where the Weise
Mansion used to be when I was a youth.
However, we Preservationists are required to try to see both sides of every
issue before jumping to irrational conclusions. This should be easy for me,
since Bethany was my home church when I was growing up, and I still am a
card-carrying Presbyterian, albeit at a different church.
Perhaps Dr. Fife's House does not warrant preservation. It wasn't deemed
significant enough to be included in "Landmark Architecture of Allegheny
County, Pennsylvania" when Jamie van Trump and Arthur Ziegler published that
definitive reference. It was also ignored by the folks who put together
"Bridging the Years, Volume II" in honor of Bridgeville's seventy fifth
birthday, although that yearbook included many houses of questionable
significance as landmarks.
The exterior of the house appears to be sound; perhaps there are interior
problems that make it a poor candidate for preservation. If that is the
case, it would be hard not to justify demolition.
I suspect the house is about one hundred years old. The 1907 Sanborn Fire
Insurance map shows a large house at that location. Dr. Fife shows up in the
1907 R. L. Polk Directory; he was not one of the signers of the Petition for
Incorporation in 1901, although Elizabeth P. Fife was. "Bridging the Years,
Volume II" implies that he took over Dr. Donaldson's practice in 1883;
somehow that seems a little bit too early to me. At any rate, his house
certainly dates back many years.
Perhaps my interest in preservation and my concern about discarding old
things is based upon my wife's recent passion for replacing old, worn-out
items. She replaced her ten year old car with a new one; her twenty year old
stove with a new one; her thirty year old disposall with a new one; and her
forty year old kitchen cabinets with new ones. What lies ahead for her
seventy year old husband?
Mt. Lebanon Municipality publishes a glossy monthly magazine entitled "mt.
lebanon" which has been running a series called "near neighbors" (apparently
their word processor lacks capital letters), which provides the locals with
ideas of nearby communities they can visit when they are into "slumming".
This month the series suggested they visit Bridgeville, "a snap-shot of
small-town America". After all it "is so close, it won't take long to get
home". Despite the tongue-in-cheek, sometimes demeaning, flavor of the
article, it does present Bridgeville in a very favorable light. Perhaps this
is a vision of what Bridgeville could become in the future.
A century ago, Bridgeville was the capital city of a small rural area
populated with farms and "coal patch settlements", a place for residents of
the neighboring townships to shop, to do their banking, to go to church, and
in general to take advantage of a typical "down town" district.
Today Bridgeville is surrounded by housing developments, ranging from
low-middle class to luxurious, and by modern shopping malls. Perhaps the
future of its business district should be focused on being "a snap-shot of
small-town America", a haven for the suburbanites who seek escape from the
malls.
Somehow I managed to get through High School without gaining the
understanding of and love for poetry that my wife possesses. Actually my
father had a better grounding in poetry in the nineteenth century one room
school he attended than I did forty years later. Nonetheless on occasion,
when I am pondering some phenomenon I do recall some bit of verse that seems
appropriate.
When considering the irony of my old church demolishing a fine old house in
order to provide additional parking, the phrase "God moves in a mysterious
way, His wonders to perform" came to mind. I couldn't recall what poem
produced that profundity, so I fell back on "old reliable" -- Bartlett's
"Familiar Quotations" -- and was surprised to learn that it was part of the
first verse of a hymn by William Cowper, written in 1779. The rest of that
verse is "He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm."
It's easy for me to resurrect the situation in which I learned that verse,
and it too is ironic. When I was a teenager and bored stiff with one of Dr.
Potter's sermons at Bethany Church, I frequently would leaf through the
hymnal and read the verses. Hymnal verses and the lyrics to popular songs of
the mid-century have been the extent of my exposure to poetry. This hymn
certainly provided an appropriate theme for this specific experience. I hope
it doesn't cause too great a storm.
Remembering Bethany Church in those days brings up the subject of
Predestination. It wasn't an official doctrine there, but there were enough
predestinarian undertones to warrant my trying to learn more about it. A few
years later I became close friends with a legitimate Scotch (old country)
Presbyterian who explained to me that there was no reason to feel guilt
about one's failures. He had an old aunt who believed that everything that
happens is predestined ("somewhere in Heaven it's written down in a little
book"), much like the script for a play.
Psychologically, Predestination must be extremely therapeutic. At least it
provides no opportunity for things like guilt complex. Perhaps the best way
for me to resolve my dilemma about "the Church" demolishing a fine old
landmark in order to improve parking for parishioners is to accept the
possibility that it is predestined and that there is some good reason for
it.
I think I shall rationalize the situation by falling back on another old
verse from the hymnal -- "Time, like an everlasting stream, bears all her
sons away" -- and accept the inevitable without understanding it.