Hearing that one of the local United churches was planning on tearing down their manse, or clergy house, I wanted to take a few pictures to document what would soon be a sprawling gap fronting Corner Brook's West Street.

After the first Bay of Islands Presbyterian church was built in Birchy Cove (now Curling), their second church was a more permanent and remarkable structure, built near the modern-day location of Corner Brook's city hall.

Over in Petries, on the west side of Curling, Methodists built their first building in the early 1890s. Methodism didn't flourish like Presbyterianism in Western Newfoundland, but Methodists still started another school/chapel at Humbermouth (the eastern side of Corner Brook) in 1906.

Around the time of the construction of the paper mill and its planned townsite, the Methodists and two-thirds of Presbyterians voted to merge into the United Church. With the congregations now together, plans were made and mortgages acquired, to construct a church hall between Park & West Street in 1925. This hall would serve as the church space until a more substantial building could be constructed.

Three years later a home for clergymen was built north of the church hall. This was the United Church's manse. Instantly one of the finer homes in town, with a stately porch, plenty of windows and prominent dormers.

First United quickly outgrew their church hall and by 1936, they were fundraising in hopes of building a sizable church. They quickly put shovel to sod in a 1937 groundbreaking, but by 1938, a lack of funds meant that the only work being completed was the laying of cement blocks in the basement.

It was 1941 before the cornerstone for the church was laid and throughout the early 1940s things continued to move slowly. Even the pews ordered from Waterloo's Globe Furniture Company were delayed.

The church finally had its dedication service on September 8th, 1946.

The above picture was taken sometime in the late 40s, after the Old Presbyterian Church had been moved 100 yards from the city hall site and was now in use as a sunday school for the United Church. (It was dismantled soon after and parts of it were used to construct the United Church in Curling. Also, the Church Hall was later the IOOF Hall, before being demolished in the 1960s.)

The four communities of Curling, Corner Brook West, Townsite & Humbermouth merged together to form Corner Brook in 1956. Back then, there were four separate United churches, one in each of these four communities. All four of these churches are still open today, meaning that there's four churches for one denomination in a city of 19,800 people.

In the early 2000s, Corner Brook almost lost all of these churches: Townsite's gorgeous, stone First United; Curling's fine United Church, Humbermouth's delightful Humber United and Corner Brook West's intrinsic Oakland United. Plans were put into action to sell everything and build a megachurch out at a central location, going as far as drawing up details regarding the sale of all four churches and obtaining an architectural rendering for the new construction.

The First United Church supported everything, but thankfully indecisiveness and disagreement between the four churches ultimately sabotaged this plan to construct a warehouse megachurch out in some bog up on the ring road¹.

1 - This is tongue-in-cheek. I imagine it would be on the Ring Road or on
top of Wheelers Rd, but the new central location wasn't actually hammered down.

Following the failure of the megachurch plan, First United went forward with fixing the deferred maintenance issues happening at their own church. Their old gymnasium had fallen into disrepair, and faced with the decision of demolition or renovation, the church partnered with Housing NL to convert the space into the Parkview Apartments in 2013.

Following the apartment conversion, a kitchen was added to the renovated basement in 2013, then the roof, gables, eaves and tower were all replaced or restored in 2014 and 2015. Sadly, many people lament this tower work where they used sheet metal to cover up the ornamental, louvered bell tower that's bracketed by trees and overlooks the beloved grassy West Street lawn. I can't find the exact costs, but I overheard a conversation where the cost to repair the tower to the original condition was something over-the-top like a million dollars, while the sheet metal coverup was more like $20,000 or $30,000.

(Take these numbers with a grain of salt, because who knows if the two suits I heard talking about this knew what they were talking about. Regardless, there was a cost difference that led the church to the sheet metal decision.)

I can understand the steeple cover-up, even if it seems to be the the thing that bothers people the most. Personally, I was bothered more by the removal of the green wrought iron fence that lined the front lawn along West and Chestnut Street. This was removed in 2018, after deferred maintenance and a lack of paint meant that the church decided "just" to remove it and maybe install a new fence in the future. My fingers are crossed that the new fence is just as stately and attractive, and not one of those hollow, vinyl square fences from Canadian Tire.

In addition to the fence removal, the church leaders also voted unanimously to tear down their manse in 2017.

Over the years, unattractive white vinyl siding was installed over the manse exterior, that gorgeous porch was demolished instead of renovated, and economical windows had been installed. The house losing its grandeur over the years was given as a reason for the demolition decision; as well as dated wiring/plumbing/heating sources and the need for additional parking.

First United's manse was vacant for 13 years, and having explored a couple of other chapel houses or manses around Western Newfoundland, I was always confused at why these buildings all seemed to be abandoned nowadays.

As it turns out, the trend for these churches is to give their ministers a housing stipend to live in their own home, partly because the ministers want to build up their own home equity. This leaves the church selling their old manse like Oakwood United, Our Lady Star of the Sea (Benoit's Cove) or Immaculate Heart of Mary (Humbermouth); or tearing the manse down like First United or Our Lady of Mercy (Port au Port).

In Humbermouth, or Corner Brook East, Humber United sold off their manse instead of letting it fall into ruin. It was one of my favourite houses in Corner Brook when it was teal, but I still love the uniquely shaped home on Clarence Street today. (This is helped by the fact that they chose a tasteful dark gray vertical siding when modernizing it.)

This former manse contributes to the other distinct homes along Clarence Street, while also preserving the fabric of the neighbourhood better than a vacant lot.

On the day of the in-house yard sale at First United, we went over to the church later in the day and found a collection of people outside. As I walked up, one of the fellers said that most of the stuff was sold and everything else was now outside for peoples' perusal.

This of course derailed the whole reason I was here, as I didn't want any old minutiae from the manse, I only wanted to take some pictures and see the interior of a building that was going to go away soon. Explaining this to the church goer, he gave me a once over and decided my story checked out.

Stepping towards the back steps, maybe we should have came earlier, because the best we were going to do now was a quick guided tour.

The guided tour ended up being great because the guy didn't rush or question me like I anticipated. This was also helped by Shellereeno playing her role to perfection, asking lots of questions and telling lots of little anecdotes, to give me time to focus on exploring and taking pictures.

I couldn't help but notice the fantastic condition of the interior. I understand that wiring, plumbing and heating aren't always glaring issues - especially as we didn't go down to the basement - but it was still hard to understand how it was a unanimous decision to demolish this place.

I know I'm a biased voice who wants every old building kept around, but both the housing and the rental market are great in Corner Brook. It's hard for me to accept that the church would prefer to have 20 parking spots and pay $10k or whatever for demolition, rather than get $200k for this house, or $1200 every month as a rental.

First United also had four different ministers since anyone occupied this home. I'm curious about the amount of discussion that occurred in terms of quickly selling this house, instead of letting it sit here for 13 years. Then again, maybe they didn't make a concrete decision because of all the clergical turnover.

With this very minor amount of decay, the heat and power had to be running all those years too, so you think a decision would have been made more quickly. Through all those years, money was going to various utility bills.

Even through the first floor of spacious and bright rooms, with windows lined with fantastic moulding, my favourite room was still up on the top floor.

I almost didn't check it out, but our guide insisted it was worthwhile to see. That is, if I wanted to watch my head while going up the tight staircase.

Overlooking the fact that the ceilings up here were only around 6 feet tall, I really wanted to have a couple couches up here to hang with good friends. The funky carpet, dark corners, and low roof to create intimacy - this space had it all.

In addition to the manse interior, I was ecstatic to finally find a window without a screen, allowing me to gaze out over West Street from a vantage point that wouldn't last much longer.

First United tore down their manse on October 1st 2017, after waiting one extra day to avoid disrupting the nighttime Nuit 150 festivities.

Nuit 150 was an awesome, art-in-the-street event that made it feel like I wasn't even in Corner Brook. With art installations and crowds all over West Street, it was like something you would randomly happen upon in an actual city like Montreal.

I remember going over to the United Church's lawn to see an installation that held my date's interest, but I had no idea that the plan was to tear down the manse the next day. I stood there in the cold, thinking about how I really needed to get around to taking better exterior pictures of the old manse.

That wouldn't happen of course, so I have to rely on Google StreetView and a casual snapshot from some random rainy day (although I probably have some long distance shots from Three Bear Mountain).

Anyway, for how critical I've been of First United in this update, their expanded parking lot is often jammed full of cars. I'm of the opinion that people can be inconvenienced and walk over to their destination, but it's also not like this parking lot isn't being used (and often by a less mobile, church-going crowd).

That being said, it's now a wide open space without the wrought iron fence, the manse or the manse's surrounding trees. In a city with so much snow that most fences don't stand a chance, suddenly you have another space that's sprawling and undefined, feeling like the big box part of town with buildings plopped wherever and no urban details like fences, benches or shrubbery.

The church has a master plan for the entire property though, so we'll see what eventually comes of the space.