The way Margaret Rose sees it, the building that is home to St. Aidan's Episcopal Church in Alden serves the same purpose today that it has always served.
“It’s been a site of healing for 100 years,” said Rose, the church's warden and worship leader. “There may have been a doorway blocked off, a floor covered, but basically it looks very much the way it used to look.”
But looks can be deceiving. The building that is now a house of worship got its start in life as a much different kind of house: a bathhouse. It was built at a time black water transformed the rural village into a giant health spa, with three bathhouses operating and attracting visitors by the trainload who bathed in a mineral-rich elixir that was known as black water.
Alden will celebrate its bathhouse legacy Saturday when the Alden Historical Society continues to mark its sesquicentennial with a Black Water Day bus tour. The tour from 2 to 4 p.m. will trace the story of the 20th century bathhouse phenomenon.
More here-
https://buffalonews.com/2019/06/10/from-black-water-bathhouse-to-an-episcopal-church-a-place-for-healing-in-alden/
No comments:
Post a Comment