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Providence Heights Campus in Issaquah, Washington, was designed in the 1950s as a state-of-the-art, modern gothic architecture and completed by the Sisters of Providence in 1961.
The purpose of the campus was to give equal opportunity to women religious on an equal basis to the men of the Catholic Church. Providence Heights was only one of two for that purpose in the United States. Times were changing in the Catholic Church during the 1960s and by 1969, the original purpose of Providence Heights as an educational opportunity for women became untenable. The campus was sold to Lutheran Bible Institute and eventually to The City Church.
In 2016 the property was listed as endangered by the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation. Local and regional groups fought hard to preserve the campus. Preserve Providence Heights was the last. This is their story.
Author’s other books
Emergence: The Tale of Newton Nesbitt
Emergence is a natural wonder of butterflies. In this minimalist novel strands of life weave daily impressions, resurrection, and hope.
Main character, Newton Nesbett is the middle aged owner of a second hand bookstore. There he is surrounded by dusty piles of long discarded literature. His life is confined to the mid twentieth century building and his World War Two era bungalow. It is his cocoon. His life is about to change.
Excerpt:
His unfocused reflection looks like an old man. His brown corduroy trousers, green Irish cable vest over a neatly pressed cream shirt are frankly tired and worn. But then the bookstore windows are grimy as usual by the end of the day. That must be it.
Full Circle
June 16, 2004 on the one hundredth anniversary of her father’s famous walk around Dublin, Chellsia Bloom comes full circle as her own life ebbs. Shouting No! to her mother, Molly’s YES! Chellsia is an unwilling warrior this night. Her extraordinary music as a professional cellist has filled her life spanning the 20th century. As she struggles in the dark hours she looks back over the century with a heroic eye. Her only weapon against a century of conflict is her art. And so she passes this her last night playing music and dreaming dreams. “She will not rest quietly and then be gone. Her playing will ring out and her cry will be heard in all its tortuous agony. It is the music of conflict and the cry of the dying who mourn. It is the dissonant voice of a century of grief, pain and anger.” She is one artist representing many; her epic struggle that of the poet, the musician, the painter, the playwright each participating in the confusion and seeming meaningless of life in the modern world.
The Artist in the Rear View Mirror
Tulips and daffodils, pale pink, white and blue English wood hyacinths nod to the breeze of a spring sunny morning beneath the apple tree. The clouds over Tiger Mountain swirl around the peak. The dew shimmers on the Oregon oxalis under the apple blossoms and I wonder, “How did I get here?”
It is my time of life when ambition dissolves. The future no longer stretches like a vast plain open to the horizon for endless exploration but narrows to a steep mountain pass. Choices are fewer as journey’s end approaches, but there are still surprising waterfalls and patches of wildflowers, bird song, and new vistas to explore there on the path. Much of the journey becomes looking back toward those valleys receding between the peaks. In the economic world there are few opportunities, so one goes into “retirement”.
Growing up in the 1950 I have been witnessing 7 decades of American life and culture. This memoire is how that life has transitioned from the eyes of a small child, through a greater personal and world view with the developing eyes of an artist. My life is at last, able to in part, the connection of all life on earth and beyond to the universe or universes as I gaze in wonder at the stars or marvel at microscopic images. A memoire reflects it all.