Oct 17, 2016 3 min read

We may study history in school, but we are frequently not good about preserving it.

Due to expediency or shortsightedness, we end up bulldozing away or neglecting places we should be cherishing for the things they reveal about our past. Consider the dozens of big-city movie palaces that were lavishly appointed and intricately designed that were either destroyed or barely escaped demolition once the migration to the suburbs and the multiplexes began in the 1960s.

Some other examples: The above-ground portion of Penn Station in New York, considered by many to have been an architectural gem, was razed in 1963 to make way for Madison Square Garden. Ancient mosques in Saudi Arabia that were pivotal in the development of Islam have been destroyed. Churches were heedlessly leveled in the Soviet Union in the 1930s to satisfy state diktats. Even the Cavern in Liverpool, England, where the Beatles cut their musical teeth, was obliterated in 1973 to make way for an underground rail system.

Then there are the places still with us but in danger of slipping away. For almost 30 years, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has annually assembled a list of sites it considers endangered. This year’s list includes Azikiwe-Nkrumah Hall at Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University, the first institution to grant degrees to freed slaves; the James River in Jamestown, Va.; and Sunshine Mile, a commercial corridor in Tucson.

In 2011, the Isaac Manchester House in Avella was named to the National Trust’s list of endangered places. In a story that appeared in Sunday’s edition, we reported on another site in Washington County that is imperiled – the cabin a few miles south of Prosperity called “Moon Lorn,” where the acclaimed painter Malcolm Parcell lived and created his striking, memorable works.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. When Parcell died in 1987, Moon Lorn was purchased by a foundation that bears the artist’s name, with the intention of transforming it into an artists’ retreat. A decade later, the foundation sold the home to private buyers. Then, in 2014, Consol Energy bought the property as part of its expansion of longwall mining. As the story by Park Burroughs pointed out, the 14-acre property has been bedeviled ever since by tall grass and vandalism.

“Sadly and shamefully, Moon Lorn today is abandoned and nearly a ruin,” he wrote. “It has been ransacked by vandals, its plumbing and wiring stripped by copper thieves, its walls defaced by graffiti. Its doors and its locks have been broken, its furniture and even a stained-glass window stolen. The floors are littered with beer bottles and trash.”

Consol Energy insists that it tries to secure properties it purchases and that it wants to team up with some other organization to restore the site. But the sand is running rapidly through the hourglass. Sandy Mansmann, coordinator of the Washington County History & Landmarks Foundation, said that Moon Lorn is “not beyond repair, but we are close to losing it.”

Mansmann has, in fact, been working to get the site designated on the National Register of Historic Places. Farley Toothman, a former Greene County judge, has vowed that he would quickly restore Moon Lorn if only Consol Energy would lease the property to him.

That would be infinitely better than the status quo.

Every day, Moon Lorn inches a little bit closer to being a landmark that exists only in photographs and memories. Consol Energy needs to protect the property and find a partner to restore it. County leaders need to apply pressure to make this happen.

Now. Before it’s too late.