1956 Church Dedication-ground breaking Revisited!!

While digging through the various boxes of donations in the church archives, we found a little envelope with these wonderful pictures labeled March 3, 1957…which was the day the new church was dedicated and the first service was celebrated in the building. This week we found another old envelope of slides from the same day, and these indicate that they were taken in 1956. The groundbreaking for the church happened in the spring of 1956 and we now believe all of these pictures are from the groundbreaking ceremony in 1956.

These old pictures are always treasures because they reveal so much about the history of the church. We’ll write more about the construction of the main sanctuary soon, but here’s a peek at this day of celebration for the congregation after many months of fund raising and planning, as they prepared to begin consctruction on the new sanctuary.

If you know the identities of any of the people in the pictures, please let us know and we will label them!!

To help orient you when you look at these pictures, here’s the Church Campus in 1956….the red area is the lawn where most of these pictures were taken from. The blue is where the new main sanctuary would stand. Parish Hall and Rectory are in the same locations.
Canon West (far right), and Bishop Block (second from right). Bishop Block presided at the groundbreaking ceremony. Parish Hall is in the background.
The building in the background of this picture is the original Rectory.
The congregation, choir, clergy and visiting dignitaries gathered on the church lawn in front of the chapel to break ground for the new main sanctuary. Note that St. Mark’s Chapel was still its original size and you can see the Sunday School buildings behind the Chapel.
Canon West (right) directed the Children’s Choir, dressed in their bright robes with red beanies for the girls.
Tom Rhoads was the music director in 1957. His salary was $100 a month in 1957, but the Vestry voted a raised to $150 a month for him in March of 1957. In this picture you can see the adult choir robes – blue with square hats. C. Thomas Rhoads was a very reknowned organist.
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