Historic Hood River
Asbury Methodist Church
Notes
This building has witnessed quite a bit of change in the community, and provides a good example of “adaptive reuse”. After decades of serving as a church, a few years ago it had a major interior renovation to start a new life as a climbing gym called “Brimstone Boulders”. That renovation left the exterior relatively unchanged, though we know it has seen major changes in earlier renovations. I don’t have the exact chronology, but one renovation saw the original 1896 building lifted and rotated on the lot, another saw the original 60′ steeple shortened. I see two significant changes between this image (circa 1950) and the modern view: the steeple has been shortened even more, and the overhead power lines were buried in the urban renewal project (circa 2014).
It’s worth a click to see when Booker T. Washington visited this site.
Will
Conor, Jen and crew have done a great job making this into a welcoming community hub.
L.E.
My goodness, they rotated that big brick building?
That was quite a humorous discussion we had ten years ago about Booker T or Jack Johnson.
Arlen L Sheldrake
LOTS of good memories from the 50s….especially the youth group.
nels
Any information explaining the rather flat observatory type structure with lots of windows on the middle top of the church?
Arlen L Sheldrake
most interesting question Nels….I have no memory of any "sky light" in the ceiling of the main room….spent a lot of time in the basement, not much upstairs. Arlen
Bill Seaton
This was my first church, and I was in Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF) with Arlen.
Arlen L Sheldrake
right on Bill…..my memory is that we were in that group primarily to meet girls from other churches.
ArthurB
The history of the building is very confusing. The early pictures show a wood frame building of the same design. We have documentation of the building being rotated on the site, and all the images after that appear to be a brick building. I don’t know if the brick is a facade, or if the building was largely rebuilt to the same footprint with the same glass, but masonry instead of wood.
ArthurB
A little more info on the remodel of the church in 1910. Not sure it clears anything up! https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn83009939/1910-06-22/ed-1/seq-1/