Dear saints,

Last Sunday, three groups of parishioners had the opportunity to tour the Egleston building and see closer up what the forum the previous Sunday had talked through as we examined together an assessment of its condition. It was good to be able to answer questions and allow folks to get a sense of the building in its current state. 

Given that most of us were not on the tours, here are some of the elements the tour covered. And should you wish to do a self-guided look around at some point during the week, please let me know. We’d love to welcome you into our beloved staff home!

Perhaps most easy to notice are the sheer number of cracks that have appeared following the dewatering Briley Brisendine had noted last weekend had occurred on the site. Cracks can be seen along several of the jambstones (vertical stones placed at the sides of door or window openings). In several areas the masonry has discernibly shifted and there are numerous separations between window frames and jambstones readily visible.

To start at the top and move down, on the third floor of Egleston, joints between the bays have opened above the buttress and continue up to the capstone at the roof. The capstone buttress has fractured and several of the bricks have cracked. Millwork at the ceiling has visibly separated in several locations around the room. Cracks within staff offices are plentiful, and in some offices there is damage to ceilings. 

One of the more striking stops on the tour is at the connector between Egleston and the Parish House where it is possible to see the connector pulling away from the wall of the Parish House. 

In the library, what was hard to see on the tour but was visible before we did some temporary aesthetic fixes, were cracks in the brick masonry behind the plaster finish. Before those aesthetic repairs, wallpaper, plaster, and stucco finishes were cracked all the way through in some cases, and in a number of places had pulled away from the brick masonry wall behind. Some sections of the plaster and stucco finish were found to be no longer attached to the inside face of the masonry. On the south wall of the library it was possible then to see the south wall pulling away from the ends of the joists. 

Finally, in the basement where the choir suite is located, items of note include doors along the east wall that had shifted and had been difficult to operate, baseboards and crown moldings that had separated from the wall, and cracks in the ceiling of the hallway that are visible leading to the boiler room.

When the staff asked how the tours had gone this week at our Tuesday staff meeting, they let me know that they would have loved to have been there. “Please tell people that I can’t work in my office”, was one of the comments. It was an important reminder that with all of this talk of masonry walls and jambstones, Egleston is a building made for people, and if all of the details we have collated about its damage tell us anything, it is that we need to act so that it can once more be a building fit for people. Today, it is not. 

Part of what the Egleston Task Force has been trying to do these past two weeks is to invite you, the parish, into the challenge they face: how to most responsibly remedy the damage the Egleston building has suffered and fulfill the vision of the master plan. We want to do that as thoroughly as possible hence all of this detail about what is going on with the building. With that in mind, our architects, Perkins&Will, are working on a longer report which will allow you to get under the hood with all this even more, and for the visual learners among us, we are also preparing a video tour of Egleston so you will be able to see what folks saw last weekend, at your leisure. 

With all of the conversations we’ve been having of late about the problems this delightful building has, it is also important to remember the memories of the life of this parish that Egleston holds. I loved hearing at our visit to Canterbury Court recently how one of the residents there met his future wife at an Agnes Scott-Georgia Tech dance held in Egleston Hall. Just this week, we held a small funeral reception in the library, and I was reminded of the opening of our little exhibition of Harry Pritchett’s years here as rector, when a number of us gathered with his family and gave thanks for a priest who urged this church to remember how God is a surprise. God has a vibrant and exciting future in store for this church right there on the corner of West Peachtree and Ponce, and across this city block. The surprise is not that God will indeed do a new thing with this church and its buildings, it is that we don’t know what that new thing is quite yet. We have to have faith, which is handy, because faith is one thing this church has in abundant supply. 

As always, reach out with any questions or comments you might have, and keep on reminding one another of the life and hope you find here. 

See you in church.