Going to church the First Christian way

I thought it would be interesting to use Sundays to focus on Rensselaer's churches and to see how many Sundays I can go before I run out of material. Indiana is richly endowed with religious denominations, with influences from North and South, East and West. If I just focus on one area denomination a week, I should not run out of material until this summer sometime. (Valparaiso University has a good set of maps online showing the regional distribution of various denominations .)

For no particular reason other than I have a nice picture, I am starting with the First Christian Church, located the intersection of Susan and Van Rensselaer. The building was built in 1938 in the late Gothic revival style. It does not have a website that I could find, but the Disciples of Christ, which is the overall group to which this church belongs, is at www.disciples.org/
The website of the Disciples of Christ provides this information about themselves:

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), while founded on American soil in the early 1800s, is uniquely equipped to live up to its identity that it is a "movement for wholeness in a fragmented world." The denomination was born in the 1800s, and continues to be influenced by its founding ideals of our unity in Christ with openness and diversity in practice and belief.

The church is identified with the Protestant “mainstream” and is widely involved in social and other concerns. Disciples have supported vigorously world and national programs of education, agricultural assistance, racial reconciliation, care of the developmentally disabled and aid to victims of war and calamity.

The denomination now counts about 700,000 members in the United States and Canada in about 3,700 congregations. Numerically, the strength of the Disciples of Christ runs in a broad arc that sweeps from Ohio and Kentucky through the Midwest and down into Oklahoma and Texas.

More detailed information and the history of the denomination is available on Wikipedia. I do not know much about the local congregation. Feel free to provide more in the comments.

Post Office Mural

Have you ever noticed the painting on the wall in the Post Office and wondered why it is there? It was painted in 1939 by John E. Costigan and is titled "Receiving the Mail on the Farm." There were a lot of these paintings done in the late 1930s and early 1940s; many towns in Indiana have an example. Here is a link to one in Fowler, Attica, and Crown Point.
These are sometimes referred to as WPA projects (The Jasper County Interim Report makes this mistake), but they were funded by a different program, one in the Treasury Department:

Often mistaken for WPA art, post office murals were actually executed by artists working for the Section of Fine Arts. Commonly known as "the Section," it was established in 1934 and administered by the Procurement Division of the Treasury Department.

Here are some more information and perhaps some better pictures of the mural. It seems that it has had some restoration work done; the company that did it has done a great many of these New Deal Post Office restorations.

I looked for more information about Costigan and did not find a lot. He seems to be a pretty minor artist, and his art, mostly prints, sells at auctions for hundreds of dollars, not thousands.

Next time you are at the post office, take a little time and appreciate the interior. It seems little changed from what it was like when it was first built. It is very 1940s--a living museum in a way, in an age that no longer relies on it to deliver messages.
If you visit old post offices in other cities, be on the lookout for similar art work.

Update: According to the numbers on the side, this is post 100 for Rensselaer Adventures.

Amtrak in the morning

Every morning the Amtrak train stops at the tiny Rensselaer station on its way to Chicago.
Four days a week the train starts in Indianapolis and is called the Hoosier State, and on those mornings the train has only two or three cars. On the day I took these pictures, the train was longer, indicating that it had started in New York and was called the Cardinal.
The train pulled to a stop, the conductor looked around to see if anyone was waiting, and quickly pulled away. (Passengers who are boarding in Rensslaer are supposed to buy their tickes online.)
Away it goes, past the little shelter.
This evening it will be coming back from Chicago, and if you live in Rensselaer and listen carefully, you may hear it.

For rent

I have noticed a number of commercial buildings for rent around Rensselaer, and since I like to take pictures, I began to stop whenever I saw one and take its picture. There are, after all, interesting stories behind each of these empty buildings, though I often am not one of the people who knows what those stories are.

On the north end of town, Sharper Image Salon recently moved out of this building, which was probably a gas station originally. In the not too distant past it was either a pizza place or a Mexican restaurant, or both. What do you remember being here? Is Sharper Image Salon out of business, or did it move?

Across the street is this old gas station, which not too long ago was housing a bridle shop or feed shop of some kind. I did not understand what market they were trying to reach, so I am not surprised that it did not last. Retail is a very risky business with a very high turnover.
The Japser County Interim Report (discussed here) liked this building, which it dates about 1930-36, giving it notable status:

A notable house-and-canopy gas station on the north side of town testifies to the heyday of the [Jackson, now US 231] highway, whose route was significantly eclipsed by the coming of Interstate 65.

Here is a little background on the house-and-canopy style for gas stations from the Internet, and a house-and-canopy style gas station in Illinois with an impressive write up on Wikipedia.
To the east, the old Schumacher factory is still empty.
In the downtown, part of the historic old Horton Building is without a tenant. When I came to town, it housed Dr. Gribble the optometrist. Then for a while it was an antique store, and after its rent was raised and it left, the building served as a tatoo parlor for a while. The building was built in 1902 and is in the style of functional neoclassical, whatever that means.
Also downtown is this nondescript building next to the bank. Most recently it was an antique store, but the owner bought the old Murray building, and decided it gave him enough room so there was no reason to rent his orginal quarters. I think when we came to town this was part of Schultz's Department Store, which went out of business and was replaced by Harvey's. Then I think it was vacant a while. If you have more accurate information, please share it.
Across the street is another empty building that was most recently TJs Unfinished Furniture. Before TJs I think it was Falveys, a clothing store. If you have more information, please share.
Leaving the downtown and going down river, we find the old laundromat on College is empty. When I first came to town there were several laundromats and they were fairly busy. Now I know of none in town. I have not read anything about the demise of the laundromat, but it is a business that has declined as general prosperity has increased. Maybe the rent-to-own businesses were the final nail in its coffin.

The last business in this location was a vacuum cleaner shop called the Ho Ho Vac Shop. I always meant to take a picture of it but never did, and now it is too late. There was also a pool hall somewhere in this building.
Just north of Pizza Hut is another empty laundromat. I do not think anything has been in here for years. There were rumors that the Mexican restaurant that was displaced when CVS built downtown would move here, but it never did.
In the strip mall itself there is currently only one vacancy, an empty spot between American Rental and the Check-to-Go. I think it is an ideal spot for a Starbucks--location, location, location.
My final picture is of the east end of the bowling alley, in the spot formerly occupied by the Kentland Bank, which has moved to its new location. I was hoping to go to its open house, but it was postponed by weather and I missed it.

There are almost always empty commercial buildings. I cannot tell whether there are more than usual this year or not, though nationally vacancies in mall are at a ten-year high. We are in a recession, so we should expect to see more vacancies, but anecdotal evidence is always risky.

Update February 20, 2009: The old Schumacher building has a new tenant, How About That. How About That is the name of a trucking company owned by Ron Kasparian, who is a very recent graduate of SJC. He was unusual as an undergraduate because he already was running a business. Now that he does not have to bother with classes, his business seems to be rapidly growing despite the tough economy. Good luck, Ron.

The flag

The winter winds have done some damage at Brookside Park, as this unanchored banner shows.

It also did some damage to another banner, the star-spangled banner by the LaRue pool.

This may be similar to what Francis Scott Key saw when he was inspired to pen what became the national anthem. However, I do not think most people will be stirred to patriotic thought at the sight of it. It is time for a new flag in the park.