Nanticoke panorama

Panorama 1, April 20, 2018. Click on the image to see in higher resolution

Panorama 2, April 23, 2018

Panoramic view of Nanticoke as seen from Holy Trinity Cemetery in Newport Township.

Five churches can be seen here:

St. Stanislaus (now closed) on the far left, orange and copper-green with a gray roof on the domed steeple;

St. Joseph (now closed), brick red with a dark steeple, partially obscured by trees;

Holy Trinity (now St. Faustina Main Site), tawny yellow with a dark steeple;

St. John Slovak Lutheran, yellow-orange with a dark steeple;

and St. Mary's (now St. Faustina Secondary Site), brick red with a gray steeple.

The image is level, the far landscape actually slopes up from left (north) to right (south), while the grounds of the cemetery drop off on a sharp hill.

Poem: Ora Pro Nobis

This is my first published work - that is to say, my first written piece to appear in a publication (Word Fountain, The Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library, Winter 2017 issue.) I have previously had the tremendous honor of having my work appear on the buses of the Luzerne County Transit Authority as part of the Wilkes University / LCTA Poetry in Transit series, and I have of course published numerous pieces online on my own blog, Another Monkey. But this is the first time my work was submitted, selected, and published in a physical magazine that people could hold in their hands! Copies are limited but will be available at the Osterhout Library in Wilkes-Barre, PA. The entire contents of the magazine will be made available online at some point.

Ora Pro Nobis
Harold Jenkins

Between the worn wooden pews
parishioners in a double row
approach the priest to take Communion
rocking with each step

Fewer every year
thinner, fatter, grayer, balder
fewer baptisms, more funerals

No more bazaars to mark the end of summer
with Polkas and bingo and beer
No more ancient pipe organ playing the hymns
sung in the tongue of the people who built this place

Storybook saints line the walls
silent in their stained-glass windows

A dragon hides behind the robes of a Pope
looks warily at the armored figure in the next window over
Does he wonder what fate awaits him
when the pews are empty and the organ falls silent?

He does not. He is colored glass and paint.
It does not matter to him
if in a few years he is a storybook window in a church far away
or shards of colored glass in the rubble
of a church that used to be.

The Churches of Nanticoke, Part 4

For Part 1 of this tour, go here. For Part 2 of this tour, go here. For Part 3 of this tour, go here. For all parts of this tour, go here.

We now come to the final part of our tour of the Churches of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania. While the other groups of churches have been clustered close to each other in certain parts of town, this last group is one that stretches all along Main Street, from close to the Nanticoke city limits on the East side to a point actually beyond the limits to the West.

Visitors entering or leaving Nanticoke along Main Street in the East will be familiar with a large tree that puts on a spectacular show of color each Autumn. While this tree is quite close to Janison's, the flower and garden shop, it is actually situated in front of the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses. Located at 663 East Main Street, just off of Lawrence Street, this modest hall is one of the first buildings to greet visitors entering Nanticoke from the direction of Wilkes-Barre.

Farther West along Main Street, past the traffic light at Kosciuszko and Main, past the Mill Memorial Library and the Nanticoke Armory, lurks St. George's Episcopal Church at 408 East Main Street. This small building with a heavy wooden door set in* an archway topped by a stone engraved with the church's name has the appearance of a medieval chapel - appropriate, perhaps, for a church whose patron saint is a knight who, according to legend,slew a dragon!

Keeping with the Medieval theme is the First United Methodist Church, which resembles a large, yellow castle looming over the downtown at 267 East Main Street. Its yellow brick body and purple stone foundation closely resemble the materials used in the old Nanticoke High School, which used to be located at the bottom of Kosciuszko Street until it was torn down and replaced with a CVS.

Next door to the First United Methodist Church is the First Presbyterian Church of Nanticoke, at 229 East Main. Its rich red bricks and long flight of stone steps give it a simultaneous air of simplicity and majesty - though many a child's eye has doubtless recast this building as some sort of spooky haunted house!

Note the steeple of St. John's Lutheran Church visible in the background of this photo.

To reach the final church in Nanticoke proper we must continue West along Main Street past Nanticoke's other traffic light at the corner of Main and Market Streets, past the Old Post Office / current Senior Center (soon to be torn down to make way for a Culinary Arts annex for the local Community College) and Burger King, to 40 West Main Street and the Zion United Church of Christ. This small, simple structure is set back a bit in a residential area just off of the downtown, and is easily overlooked by passing drivers.

The final church in this series is actually located in Sheatown, which is a small satellite community technically a part of Nanticoke, though in practice thought of as its own entity. To get there we continue West along Main Street until we reach a fork in the road. Taking the right fork puts us on Old Newport Street. If we follow this to 135 Old Newport Street, across the street from Marty's Blue Room and just next to Guardian Elder Care, we come upon the tiny Holy Child Church, dwarfed by the nearby now-empty St. Stanislaus Orphanage.

I include this church not for the sake of completeness - there are actually still a few other churches on the outskirts of Nanticoke that I have not included here - but because this parish is currently facing consolidation with other Catholic parishes in Nanticoke. So while others may lament the loss of their neighborhood churches, parishioners used to walking to Holy Child will now have to drive several miles to attend weekly services.

This concludes our tour of the Churches of Nanticoke. At some point in the future I may go on another photo expedition to document all of the churches located on the outskirts of Nanticoke, including one on Middle Road, several in the Hanover Section, and one in a part of Nanticoke inexplicably located on the West Nanticoke side of the river. But for now, I close the book on this part of the story of my hometown.

Map showing the locations of the churches discussed
in this entry and previous entries in this series.

*Well, I thought there was a wooden door there. Turns out it's glass. I wonder how long that's been there?

The Churches of Nanticoke, Part 3

For Part 1 of this tour, go here. For Part 2 of this tour, go here. For all parts of this tour, go here.

Next on our tour of the Churches of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania we come to a cluster of churches located in the narrow lanes just off of Main Street, four on Prospect Street and two others near the intersection of Walnut and State Streets.

The first building we come to as we move North from the vicinity of Patriot Square is a small, humble place that does not look much like a church. In fact, it was the Nanticoke Library in the decades before the Mill Memorial Library was built on the corner of Kosciuszko and Main. Located at 112 South Prospect Street, the Nanticoke Christian Fellowship serves as a place of gathering for the local Mennonite population.


Continuing North along Prospect Street we come to the Holy Name of Jesus Polish National Catholic Church, located at 98 South Prospect Street. The church's name is almost as big as the building itself!

(Fasinating note: the Polish National Catholic Church was actually initiated in the United States by a priest from Nanticoke, Rev. Francis Hodur of Holy Trinity, in 1897! This tidbit is from this website, which I found by backtracking on a SiteMeter search.)


Slightly farther North and across the street to the corner of Prospect and State Streets is the Nebo Baptist Church, one of two Baptist churches in this neighborhood. The back portion of this building, which is located at 75 South Prospect Street, was once Nanticoke's only Synagogue many years ago.


Moving back across the street we come to another Baptist church. The First English Baptist Church is located at 58 South Prospect Street.


As the map below shows, these four churches form a fairly tight cluster on Prospect Street. But there are still two more churches to see in the neighborhood.


At 120 South Walnut Street, the corner of State and Walnut Streets, we find a long, unadorned building whose only indication that it is a religious structure - aside from the small sign on the foundation indicating that it is the meeting place of the Tree of Life Christian Fellowship - are the stained glass windows set into the front and sides of the building.



Looking even further East along State Street we see a steeple rising up over a residential neighborhood. Moving closer we discover St. John's Lutheran Church, located at 231 State Street. This is actually one of two churches with very similar names - the other is St. John's Slovak Lutheran Church, located on Hanover Street near Holy Trinity Church.

This concludes the third part of our tour of the Churches of Nanticoke. In the fourth and (for now) final part of our tour we will look at the six churches located along Main Street, stretching from very close to the city limits in the East to a lone Catholic parish located beyond the city limits to the West - but one still considered very much one of the Churches of Nanticoke.

Here is a map showing the locations of the various
churches visited on this part of the tour.

Here is a larger map of the City of Nanticoke,
placing each of these first three groups in context.

The Churches of Nanticoke, Part 2

This is the second in a series of posts photographically documenting all of the churches of Nanticoke, Pennsylvania. Go here to read part 1.

Having visited the churches on the West side of Nanticoke, our tour now moves to the central section of the city. We begin with another of the city's six Roman Catholic churches, St. Francis.



St. Francis is located at 173 East Green Street and features a large attached school and community center, which in the past was rented out for graduation parties and wedding receptions. It was one of the few Catholic churches in Nanticoke not affected by the first wave of parish consolidations several years ago, and boasted a large congregation and lavish decorations both within and without. Ironically, in 2007 it also became one of the first to close - not due to any of the reasons affecting parishes throughout the city, but because a leak in the roof went undetected until it had compromised the structural integrity of the building to the point that the church was deemed unsafe to use.


The St. Francis community pulled up stakes and relocated several blocks South to St. Joseph's Slovak Roman Catholic Church, located at 107 East Noble Street. St. Joseph's is a smaller, simpler church, though its steeple rises majestically over central Nanticoke and is easily visible from throughout the city. Sadly, the nearby school has been closed for many years and has fallen into disarray, with most of the windows smashed out and boarded up.

(If you find yourself in the vicinity of St. Joseph's, be sure to cross the parking lot behind the church to visit the legendary Sanitary Bakery, which is located at 126 East Ridge Street.)


Moving North once again we come to the First Primitive Methodist Church, which according to the banner across the front is celebrating 125 years (since its establishment, I presume.) It is located at the corner of Church and Prospect Streets, just a few blocks East of St. Stanislaus.

Continuing North down Prospect Street we come to Nanticoke's central park, Patriot Square. This is a pleasant wooded park, featuring walkways and benches and a monument that resembles a missile rising from the center of the park. Across the street from the North side of this park is Diamond's Candy Shoppe, located at 4 East Broad Street - definitely worth a visit in the months when they're open. But the final church on this portion of our tour is located across from the Southwestern portion of the square, heading West.


The building at 2 West Green Street has housed several different congregations in its time. It is currently host to the Berean Lighthouse, and has been for several years.



This concludes the second part of the tour of the Churches of Nanticoke. So far we've only covered nine of the churches. Next we will travel slightly further North, and will look at six churches located just off of Main Street. In the fourth and (for now) final part of our tour, we will see all of the churches that are located on Main Street itself.

Here is an aerial view of the churches covered in part 2 of the tour, courtesy of Google Earth.

The Churches of Nanticoke, Part 1

This is a project I've been kicking around for several years, at least since this post. And thanks to a last-minute schedule change this morning, I was able to get the project started today.

Nanticoke has a lot of churches. How many, I'm still not sure - that depends on what your definition of "Nanticoke" is. Counting just the main body of the city itself, there are over twenty. And I have set out to photograph them all.

I think I got them, all in one day! But this is too much to mash together into a single post. So I've tried to break up the churches into semi-logical groupings, more or less by location.


I started my tour of Nanticoke's churches around 9:00 this morning with a trip to my own church, Our Lady of Czestachowa (also known as St. Mary's), located at 1030 South Hanover Street. I have written about this church before, and it is the initial focus of The Stained Glass Project, so I will be writing more about it in the future.


Heading North along Hanover Street, the first church we encounter is St. John's Slovak Lutheran Church. For some reason this church is not listed in the directory of churches on the Nanticoke City 2006 Community Guide & Map that I had hanging next to the 2008 Recycling Schedule.* It is possible that it was erroneously thought to be a duplicate entry for St. John's Lutheran Church, which is located several blocks away.


According to the sign in front, this church has been around for 120 years as of 2008. It is located at the intersection of Hanover and West Ridge Streets, on the other side of Ridge from Holy Trinity.


Holy Trinity, located at 520 Hanover Street, is a huge, impressive church with an incongruously small parking lot located on the other side of the busiest part of Hanover Street - a holdover from a time when churches were neighborhood affairs, and most parishioners walked to church each Sunday. It is imposing on the inside as well, with limited handicapped access and many stairs. The absence of a modern ventilation system results in a striking demonstration of what Purgatory might be like, particularly during long, hot Summer masses. This is the church currently slated to be the primary Catholic church in Nanticoke, post-consolidation.

Holy Trinity parking lot, across Hanover Street from the church.
Some people also park on Hanover Street itself.

St. Mary's parking lot, to same scale.
("Eye altitude" adjusted for difference in elevation.)

Sadly, St. Nicholas Ukranian Catholic Church, located several blocks further North at the corner of Hanover and Green Streets, is now closed, and has been for some time.

We now backtrack a bit for the last stop in the first part of our tour. St. Stanislaus is located at 38 East Church Street, just a few blocks East of Holy Trinity. For many years a special relationship existed between St. Mary's and St. Stan's, and for a while the two churches took responsibility for alternate grades of students - St. Mary's had Kindergarten, First Grade, and all the subsequent odd grades, while St. Stan's had the even-numbered grades. (Each retained its own basketball team, of course.)

This concludes the first leg of the tour of the Churches of Nanticoke. There are many more churches to cover, so I expect to spread this out over another two or three posts.



Map showing the location of the churches featured on this part of the tour. Note the location of this group on the larger map of Nanticoke.



*Also the schedules from 2007 and 2006, just in case those years ever come around again.