Russell H. Conwell, founder of the Institutional church in America : $b the work and the manBurr, Agnes Rush
Religion
Russell H. Conwell, founder of the Institutional church in America : $b the work and the man
Burr, Agnes Rush
Conwell, Russell H., 1843-1925; Minneapolis (Minn.) -- Biography
Under the auditorium and below the level of the street is the part of
the building called the Lower Temple. Here are Sunday School rooms,
with a seating capacity of two thousand. The Sunday School room and
lecture room of the Lower Temple is forty-eight by one hundred and six
feet in dimensions. It also has many beautiful stained-glass windows.
On the platform is a cabinet organ and a grand piano. In the rear of
the lecture room is a dining-room, forty-five by forty-six feet,
with a capacity for seating five hundred people. Folding tables and
hundreds of chairs are stowed away in the store rooms when not in use
in the great dining-room. Opening out of this room are the rooms of
the Board of Trustees, the parlors and reading-rooms of the Young
Men's Association and the Young Women's Association, and the kitchen,
carving-room and cloak-room. Through the kitchen is a passageway to
the engine and boiler rooms. In pantries and cupboards is an outfit
of china and table cutlery sufficient to set a table for five hundred
persons. The kitchen is fully equipped, with two large ranges,
hot-water cylinders, sinks and drainage tanks. In the annex beyond the
kitchen, a separate building contains the boilers and engine room and
the electric-light plants.
The steam-heating of the building is supplied by four one hundred
horse-power boilers. In the engine room are two one hundred and
thirty-five horse-power engines, directly connected with dynamos
having a capacity of twenty-five hundred lights, which are controlled
by a switchboard in this room. The electrician is on duty every day,
giving his entire time to the management of this plant. The building
is also supplied with gas. Directly behind the pulpit is a small
closet containing a friction wheel, by means of which, should the
electric light fail for any reason, every gas jet in The Temple can be
lighted from dome to basement.
For cleaning the church, a vacuum plant has been installed, which
sucks out every particle of dust and dirt. It does the work quickly
and thoroughly, in fact, so thoroughly it is impossible even with the
hardest beating to raise any dust on the covered chairs after they
have been cleaned by this process. Such crowds throng The Temple that
some quick, thorough method of cleaning it became imperative.
Back of the auditorium on the street floor are the business offices of
the church, Mr. Conwell's study, the office of his secretary and of
the associate pastor. All are practically and cheerfully furnished,
fitted with desks, filing cabinets, telephones, speaking tubes,
everything to carry forward the business of the church in a
time-saving, businesslike way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account