Ascension of Our Lord Church
Updated October 1, 2020 | By Matthew Christopher
When I visited the abandoned Ascension of Our Lord Church in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, I was first struck by how magnificent the building was, and what a waste it was to see it in such disrepair. Surely the building could be reused for something and thus avoid the bleak fate of so many other places of worship. I didn’t know then that less than four years later the church would be essentially destroyed but given the overall trends when it comes to abandoned churches, I probably should have guessed.
The Ascension of Our Lord Parish was founded in 1899 in a temporary chapel inside a former candy store. Construction on a permanent site on land used for a peach orchard began that same year. Built for $75,000, the church was dedicated in 1900 and served 1,100 worshippers. The rectory was built from 1901-1902 and the school was completed in 1905.
The abandoned Ascension of Our Lord Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The parish quickly outgrew this church and a little over a decade later plans were already in place to build a bigger, better church. The basement chapel for this church was completed in 1914 but due to the recession and World War I, it took until 1924 for the permit for the upper chapel to be granted and the exterior wasn’t completed until 1926. The interior was completed two years later.
By 1922 Ascension was the third largest parish in Philadelphia. The school peaked in the 1960s at 1800 students and but by 1996 it had dwindled to 260. The intervening years had not been kind to the Cathedral of Kensington, nor had it been to the neighborhood. White flight had reduced parish numbers and racial tensions boiled over between white and Hispanic gang members over arbitrary boundaries that the Hispanic residents were told not to cross. In 1980, 17% of the population was living below the poverty level, and that number mushroomed to 41% by 2010.
Ascension's lower church was completed over a decade before the upper portion.
With significantly lessened income, the upper church deteriorated. Water poured through the roof, plaster fell from the ceiling, and in 2011 the lower church was also closed and services were moved to the school auditorium. That same year the pastor was accused of sexual misconduct with a minor (he was later defrocked) and the school, whose attendance had fallen below 200 students, was closed. The following year, with repairs to the church estimated to be around $3 million and mass attendance of 188, Ascension was closed for good.
I visited to photograph it in 2014. While some of the pews had been dismantled to be moved elsewhere, the property was remarkably intact. The school library was still filled with books, candles and fake flowers lined shelves waiting for services that were no longer held, and the rectory looked like it had been cleaned the day before. As excited as I always am to have the opportunity to document a location that has been mostly untouched for years, it’s always tinged with the melancholy knowledge that I am seeing the final stage of something grand.
Later in 2014 the Ascension property was sold to developer Kevin Fei for $800,000. By July of 2017 the Kensington area, known by then as the “Walmart of Heroin”, boasted one of the nation’s largest open drug markets and equally large homeless encampments. That year a Philadelphia Inquirer article about Ascension revealed that the church had become a ‘shooting gallery’ for heroin addicts. Needles littered the building, feces and used condoms were in the confessionals – so many people squatted inside that their numbers were compared to those of Mass.
Unsurprisingly, in December 2017 Ascension burned. Nobody was hurt, but the church was ruined. Neighbors were forced to evacuate their homes in the middle of the frigid night until the flames were brought under control.
The old church still stands, blackened by fire, at it appears to be well-sealed. Like so many Philadelphia churches, it will likely wind up vacant until the value of the land that it sits on increases enough for it to be torn down. It’s a sad system, one that is leaving the city’s historical and architectural record in tatters. Without fixing the larger economic and social issues, it’s one that is likely to continue until the great urban churches and cathedrals built in the 1800s and early 1900s are nothing more than fading memories.
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