The McWilliams House

This is the McWilliams House, an absolutely beautiful Georgian revival mansion (at least I think it's Georgian revival, though it may be Victorian or Edwardian) that sits next to Grace Episcopal Church. It is, in fact, the property of Grace Episcopal, which is our most beautiful local church if you ask me. The McWilliams house is equally beautiful -- I have always admired it and fantasized about living in such a grand home. Sadly, in recent years it has fallen into disrepair due to lack of funds for upkeep, in part because there was a legal battle raging within the parish as to who actually owned the property.

Let's see if I can explain this as simply as possible: in the US, the Episcopalian church ordained an openly gay priest. This happened some time ago and I vaguely remember a news report about it. The Episcopalian Church has generally been moving in a liberal direction, which has caused concern/dissent among the more conservative members. At the same time, the leader of Grace Episcopal, Don Armstrong, was accused of misappropriating church funds to the tune of about $1.2 million. The membership of the parish then fell into two opposing factions: loosely, those who supported Mr. Armstrong, who was among the conservative opinion (and I'm assuming his supporters were as well); and those who agreed with the mainstream Church regarding homosexuality and did not support Mr. Armstrong. There was a great deal of valuable real estate at stake, as the church and McWilliams house are worth over $2 million. The battle raged on through the courts for a couple of years, with the parishioners actually holding services in two separate places in the meantime, until the non-Armstrong supporters eventually won. This makes sense to me, as the Armstrong supporters had basically voted to "secede" from Grace Episcopal and had broken away from it; how could they then lay claim to the property?

I don't recall what Mr. Armstrong's fate was (is he in prison?). I'm just glad that there was finally an end to the battle, which must have been agonizing for all the parishioners. I'm also glad that the McWilliams house has received grants and funding for its restoration, which is now underway. You can see from the picture that it's in a sad state, though some of the peeling paint may be attributed to scraping in preparation for a new application. I can't wait to see it all gussied up and beautiful again. Maybe in a year's time I can post a picture of it restored to its original beauty.

Tomorrow, a photo of the church itself. You'll see why there was a battle over it!