ASTORIA — A local church is celebrating its 125th anniversary next month with a free concert and lecture about its history in the neighborhood — which includes having roots in a former beer garden and being struck by lightning three times.
Trinity Lutheran Church, located on 37th Street off of 31st Avenue, will host the free heritage event on April 16 which will feature a performance by the parish's bell ringers and presentation by the Greater Astoria Historical Society.
Though the church technically turned 125 last year, they're carrying the celebration into 2016.
"I really wanted to do something that would connect the event to the history," said Natalia Paruz a local musician and volunteer with the church who's helping plan the celebration.
She's become the parish's informal historian after immersing herself in its historical records, including old photos, books and meeting ledgers.
"I collected anything I could find that has to do with the history," Paruz said. "It's kind of like a time tunnel."
The church's earliest services were originally held in a beer garden that used to be located on Steinway Street and Broadway, a popular gathering space for the neighborhood's many German immigrants at the time.
"That’s where the idea of forming a church, a Lutheran church, came to be," Paruz said.
The parish built its first actual church building at its current site shortly after, in 1890 — a wooden structure that was struck by lightning twice in the same year, in 1920.
The first lightning strike did only minor damage, but the second — which happened just two weeks later — set fire to the steeple and belfry, and cracked the church bell. The damaged bell is now on display in the church's garden.
The current church building that still stands today was built in 1926, an event the parish marked by placing time capsule items, like newspapers and a book with parishioners names, in its cornerstone, Paruz said.
The old wooden church building was used after that as a parish hall, until it was torn down in 1957.
Lightning struck for a third time at the current church building during a storm in 2006, damaging one of the building's spires and sending chunks of stone to the ground below, according to a news report at the time.
"This church got hit not once, not twice, but three times," Paruz mused.
In addition to the historical lecture, the April 16 event will open with a performance by the Trinity Bell Ringers, who play a set of handballs that were donated to the parish in 1983 by a local family in memory of their teenage daughter who was killed in a car crash.
The Astoria Choir — which holds its rehearsals at the church — will also perform, as well as Paruz herself who'll be playing the musical saw, the instrument she's best known for.
The celebration is open to the public.
"We aim this event at the community at large," Paruz said. "It's still so much for the church community, but its really to introduce the church throughout the neighborhood."
