The little Prairie Grove Cemetery in the Waynedale area of Fort Wayne, Indiana is home to one of the most beautiful old churches in the city. Unlike the old richly decorated brick Catholic and Lutheran churches downtown, this 19th century building is simple in the extreme. No one can remember exactly when it was built, but a recent newspaper article said that the little chapel is more than 150 years old, making it one of the oldest buildings in Allen County. I began photographing it in 1998, when I made a photograph of it for my senior project in art school. Since then I have returned many times over the years, even getting the cemetery caretaker to let me inside to photograph the interior. The church has been unused and empty since the early 1990’s, when it was last used by a small non-denominational congregation.
This is my latest photograph of the building. The sign once had a statement of faith in the Christian Gospel spelled out with moveable plastic letters that have since fallen into a jumbled pile in the bottom of the sign frame.
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This little bungalow across the street from my apartment was occupied until last year when it was abandoned. I photographed it in March.
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Here are the last two photographs I made on Easter of an abandoned church in southeast Allen county, Indiana. The brick building is located at the corner of Hoagland Road and Clayton Road east of the town of Hoagland. The bright sun kept coming in and out of fast moving dark clouds that began to unleash rain upon me as I packed up my camera after I finished this series of photographs.
This last photograph shows how the front of the old church building has been torn out to make a large barn door. The church had an addition to one side (visible in the top photo) that looks like a brick barn or garage grafted on the old church. I wish I could have seen the inside of the older part of the building.
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Here are a couple more of the photographs that I made on Easter in the small southeast Allen County town of Monroeville. The first is another view of the building from my March 29 post. This interesting old commercial building houses several small businesses, including a pizza restaurant and a liquor store. This style of brick architecture is common in small-town Indiana, but is has almost totally been eradicated from Fort Wayne, which is only about 15 miles from Monroeville and is in the same county!
The second photo is a black and white version of the photo in my March 29 post. I’m not sure yet which version I prefer; I’ll have to live with it a little longer.
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