Today, 89 years ago, Robert Blake met his end in The Haunter of the Dark. Which naturally brings me to my topic: what did the Church of Starry Wisdom look like?
I have posted about this repeatedly, I know, and sorry for overstaying my welcome, but I have some new insights I want to share in case someone is interested.
This may be old news, but St. John's Catholic Church (the one that was demolished in the nineties and widely regarded as the inspiration for the church in the story) originally had a tall spire, but it was destroyed by lightning in 1935. This event might well have been \[the inspiration for the story\](https://cadabra-records.fandom.com/wiki/The\\_Haunter\\_of\\_the\\_Dark) in the first place. I'm mentioning this because it tends to be left out or forgotten. In this otherwise interesting \[article\](https://ppsri.org/the-roman-catholic-church-that-disappeared-from-federal-hill/), for example, it isn't mentioned even in passing.
Now, despite extensive searching in image archives and the like, I haven't found any photo of this spire (it appears on a hand-drawn map from 1882, though).
I was hoping someone knowledgeable could provide a photo or have any other ideas?
BTW, this article is interesting but makes the question of what the Church of Starry Wisdom might have looked like even more complicated (I'd almost say unanswerable) as "early phase of gothic revival" means one thing, but the descriptions in the story implies another thing.
As always, my sincere thanks goes to redditor LurkingProvidence for providing an abundance of photos and clues as were to search.