Meeting House

metdmthg1.jpg (13441 bytes) Restoration of an eighteenth-century Lewes, Delaware, building has produced more than a lovely dwelling for its owners. Methodists in the community can marvel at the transformation which rescued from impending doom their denomination's 1790 meeting house located at 214 Mulberry Street.

Now resting on its third site, the restored chapel was purchased in 1980 by Dr. and Mrs. Bayard W. Allmond, Jr., of California as a result of their search for a summer home in the area. In selecting the property at 214 Mulberry Street——remembered as Knitting Street when Lewes was called Lewistown—the Allmonds received more than they bargained for. They probably invested more in renewing the building than they anticipated, but their interest and work have combined to produce something unique: a dwelling house within the accommodations of a 1790 meeting house and its 1828 addition.

Bishop Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America visited the area in October 1790 and referred to this building when he noted in his journal: "We have a chapel built at Lewistown." Erected near the corner of Third and Market Streets, the Bethel Methodist chapel was moved in 1828 to Mulberry and Church Streets and lengthened to serve the growing congregation.

When a large new house of worship was occupied at the second location in the early 1870s, relieving the little chapel of further ecclesiastical duties, the smaller structure "took off" again. Moved down the street to its present site, it was eventually converted into a duplex and known as the Register House for longtime owners.

Through the years the building claimed many owners and withstood numerous attempts at renovation and improvement. When the Allmonds started to delve into the reason their new acquisition sported a DAR shield, denoting historical significance, they became fascinated with its rich background and the accompanying possibilities.

Work covering a period of a year and a half by the local restorationist, Jack Vessels, saw new life breathed into the building's old timbers of hand-hewn oak. The owners still express excitement as they recall the day they tore off layers of materials from the second floor and uncovered evidence of a vaulted ceiling of beaded boards and end gallery. Also slumbering away, blanketed in modern materials, were original beaded molding, corner posts, and chair rails.

Windows and doors, necessarily new, have been placed in the original openings. As a visitor enters, he is welcomed by the original dimensions of the meeting house with "chapel ceiling" (as compared with cathedral ceiling) and gallery; the high window under which the pulpit would have rested; stark white walls; and woodwork in a blue-gray shade close to the initial color. By moving downstairs into the kitchen-den area and upstairs into the bedroom off the balcony, the visitor walks from the 1790 construction into 1828 addition.

The Allmonds have been generous in sharing their chapel-home with those interested in the building's precious history and/or architectural restoration, and they have placed a descriptive plaque on the front of the building.

Although Fanny Crosby's hymn, "Rescue the Perishing," refers to a human/spiritual dimension, one could be forgiven for breaking out in a verse or two as a tribute to the rescue and restoration of a bit of Methodism that appeared shortly after the formal organization of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America during the Christmas Conference of 1784.