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| The Pew & the Pug |
“Don't know much about history”, but I've always loved the song ((What A) Wonderful World--the version by Art Garfunkel with James Taylor and Paul Simon). It pops into my mind whenever I spy an unusual architectural element in our restored church townhome.
There's a “BELIEVETH” sign, high above the reclaimed oak stairs that lead out of our common lobby to the streets of the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Underneath that same staircase is what I like to call the 'door-to-nowhere'. It's the original interior door for the classical revival style architecture of the First Church, Christ Scientist-- back in the days when our home was still a church. For the Sanctuary Townhome project, the main lobby entrance stairs were built from the church pews, with open risers, so it's possible to look through those stairs to what lies beyond. And, what lies beyond, is an ornately carved wood door, but no way to access it. Just a blocked off space, kind of cool, kind of creepy, and a big collector of dust bunnies.
I pretty sure that what is actually behind the door-to-nowhere is actually a somewhere-- our media room. But, I'll have to find the original architectural drawings to be sure. Inside our media room you'd find the most interesting element for me, the end cap of one of the original church pews. The most costly part of the pew is the end cap and side panel. Our builders re-used this portion of golden-stained oak to create a divider at the top of a small set of stairs leading into our media room.
Sadly, it is also a favorite spot for my rescue pug, Flynn. To mark, that is. Both the pew, and the pee-u, has a history that I often wonder about. We adopted Flynn from Seattle Pug Rescue about a year-and-a-half back. He seemed friendly, if shy. And, he comes with some very odd behavior, mostly involving spinning and barking. I hired a trainer to help, and she did, a little. She says that you never know the history of rescues. You get what you get. We got a barker and a marker.
But sometimes I let my mind wander, to wonder about where the pug lived for his first eight years, and what he experienced. I have similar thoughts when I run my fingers over the scrolls of the pew end cap. Who else might have done the same? What were they thinking, or praying, or hoping, in the early 1900s; in a church emphasizing divine healing over modern medicine. The pug has eight years and the pew has one hundred. And, I wonder a great many things about them both.
