(upbeat music) - From a church that's an outlet for creativity.

♪ Jesus, we are fixed every day ♪ - Music and ministry goes hand in hand because we're still using our voices and being vocal.

- To homes with character and charm.

- Celebrate them.

- And document them.

- To a mansion that serves as a residence and museum.

The place comes with a lot of interesting stories.

- And a historic building transformed into a work of wonder.

Come inside with You Oughta Know on a tour of creativity and ingenuity.

Thanks for tuning in to You Oughta Know.

We're here in Old City, Philadelphia outside a 19th century old bank that's been reimagined into an immersive art experience.

Let's take a look.

Welcome to the Ministry of Awe, the bank that values you.

We are a bank with no money, but we trade in the currency of humanness.

If there's any way that we can help you, let me know.

And if you're wondering, good.

The Ministry of Awe is a historic bank with six floors of performance, visual art, sculpture, murals, interaction and fun.

Here you go.

The idea came from the site itself.

We believe very much in growing our content from what we find.

And the most fun of the process was gathering the band of over a hundred Philadelphia artists from age 90 to 19 to work together and collaborate.

A lot of my work is bent wood.

And she was saying, "I'm imagining something that has the chaotic nature that you bring to some of your sculpture.

And I really want you to do a piece that is about insecurities within this spiral staircase."

The sculpture starts at the base level when you enter on the second floor.

And the wood pieces are very ordered.

They're contained.

What you don't see is this interior layer.

And for me, that is the insecurity.

And then as the piece starts twisting through the spiral, that inner layer begins to pierce out and it creates a chaos in the storm of the sculpture where everything then begins to twist and go haywire and become almost this tornado.

There is something about going through a deep insecurity that creates a level of freedom.

We want you to explore, to feel free to wander.

If you choose to create a counterfeit check, you will have the opportunity to do so.

Best lunch.

Well done.

If you want to walk around and observe a dancer doing a small intimate performance in a corner, you are welcome to do so.

[music] The building itself is a historic landmark and it was a bank in the late 1800s.

So it's a big thrill to open up this structure which has been designed in part by a young Frank Furness.

You'll see his ornamentation on our vault in our heavens and we're proud of the historic nature and quality of this building.

You guys are here in the heavens at the Ministry of Awe.

What you're looking at here is a Meg Saligman painting.

What we've done here is brought the mural to life through the interactions that people have in the room.

Every account holder at the Ministry of Law is welcome to come and use these.

For example, moving the outer ring here changes the lighting of the mural.

And then this inner ring allows account holders to make deposits into the bank.

So if I say, "As a child, I made a snow angel."

These are essentially the stories that we're looking to bank on.

And they go up onto the architecture and are stored here in the bank as contributions.

If you tap a rosette, the space responds to your touch.

Now you see a completely different version of the mural, which centers around star constellations.

A big part of what we've been trying to create and what our work is really about is ways to being physically present in this amazing building with this phenomenal painting.

Is this bank a museum?

Is it an immersive experience?

Is it a work of art?

We actually plan for some of these answers to be a little elusive.

And at the ministry, we are trying to set up a space where creativity and connection thrives.

And I hope our visitors experience that.

Hold on a second.

Next, we're going to step inside a home that is packed with South Philly charm.

Think shag carpet and wood paneling.

So as I was saying, this house is crazy.

You're just going to love it.

We're going to step back in time.

We are in beautiful South Philadelphia and we're about to see a time capsule home that my clients bought last year.

These houses are mostly from the turn of the century through the 1920s is when they were built.

But sometime in the 60s or 70s, they got these really loud and colorful bold makeovers.

This one was definitely a 70s makeover.

There's a lot of plastic covered furniture and bold colors, wallpaper, the wood paneling was really a nod to that.

Stained glass fixtures, gilt accessories with lots of gold and marble and things like that.

Homeowners Sarah Moore and Joseph Eidel updated the main living area.

No more red shag carpet, but downstairs they left the basement frozen in time.

It was one of the things about the house that initially impressed us.

It looks like a cool place to listen to records, have a little party, have a drink.

We have the paintings painted by the cellar's grandfather, so we're really lucky to have some cow girls and cowboys and this bullfighter.

I just really think it sets the stage.

The lamps were original.

I love the basement design.

Everything's tucked away like the water meters behind a door.

The carpets like a solve for the on even floors.

Just felt like a lot of like family love have been in this house for so long.

Sue, I think the kitchen has been largely kept the same as the 70s makeover, right?

It has.

When Joe and Sarah first came to the house, we saw this light, turned it on, saw how the light came through it, the wood paneling, the faux stone kind of cornice up here.

There are a lot of things in here that said '70s and that they've decided to kind of lean into.

After seeing these types of homes again and again, Sue started documenting them.

She started the South Philly Time Capsules Instagram account in 2019.

- The people who lived in homes like this and did their makeover spent a lot of time and care and planning, and they put their all into making their home exactly what they wanted it to be.

Then they just kind of locked in on it.

Part of what I do is celebrate them and kind of document them in case they all do disappear.

Because someday it'll be a really special thing to look back on.

And now Sue is helping people like Sarah and Joe find these gems for themselves.

People are drawn to these homes for a couple of reasons.

One is that they're visually exciting.

And that maybe is the entry point where they're like, "Huh, this is doing something for me."

A lot of home buyers see these houses and they're filled with some nostalgia.

I get comments every day like, "That looks just like my grandmother's house."

A lot of these houses are houses where a family lived for 50 years or 60 years.

That shows that they love their neighborhood and that they're proud of it.

It's encouraging for people to think that could be me.

I could be the next door of that house for another 60 years and give it a second life with a nod to its first life.

You won't have to walk a mile in this shoe, but you can spend the night in it.

To York, Pennsylvania we go.

Welcome to the Haines shoe house.

I grew up here in York and the shoe house is a local icon.

The shoe house has been recognized as a historic property.

That signifies the significance and the contribution of the shoe house to the local area throughout the years.

It was actually built in 1950 by a gentleman who owned a chain of shoe stores.

His name was Malin Haynes and it was the Haynes shoe store brand that was quite prominent at that time.

And he built it as a promotional piece to spread the word about his shoe store brand.

He would raffle off stays in the shoe house to people who came into his stores and bought shoes.

It was a smashing success and he had over 100 stores throughout the Northeast.

He was very well known.

The shoe house has a lot of very unique features.

It's about 26 feet high, 48 feet long, 3 bedrooms and 2 and a half bathrooms.

About 1400 square feet total, so it's a comfortable size for a single family home, which is what it is, just in the shape of a shoe.

We actually have a boot.

We believe it's the original boot that the shoe was fashioned after.

We also have a copy of the original blueprints and you can see how the architect sketched it out kind of based on the layout of this boot that was part of their brand.

Mr.

Haynes is pictured in stained glass on the front door.

All throughout the property there are stained glass windows that have a shoe in the stained glass, obviously original to the house.

And while we don't allow pets, there is actually a shoe-shaped dog house because Mr.

Haynes actually had a great day himself.

The kitchen all the same cabinetry and built-in bench that was there original linoleum so there's so many things that are original to the house and very unique.

We've got some slanted ceilings in some of the bedrooms and some curving tight hallways but it makes it a lot of fun to navigate some of those little niches and touches.

Originally it was a guest house and then over the years it was a private residence for a time and then it became a ice cream shop slash museum.

We now rent stays on Airbnb and VRBO and different websites like that for people to come and stay here.

Really rewarding to be able to give people such a thought and unique experience.

Let's turn back the clock to the Victorian era when opulence, texture, taste and wealth ruled the design style.

We try and support the history and culture of 19th century Victorian Philadelphia.

But is there any way we can take people into that moment?

That they can say, "I can experience it.

I can feel it.

I can know what they felt."

The Zemunese or Maxwell Mansion is in Germantown, which is a section of Philadelphia that was founded starting in the 1680s.

Very often I'm asked, "Who was Ebenezer Maxwell?

I'm sure I must have heard of him."

And my response is, "No, you probably didn't."

But from our perspective it's very famous because it was one of America's first suburbs and you can get downtown in a half hour.

So it's a whole new way of living in the 19th century and merchants like Ebenezer Maxwell and his wife Anna Smith Maxwell built this place in 1859 to take advantage of that.

It could live in cleaner air with clean water and all the modern amenities including cold heat and gas lighting and flush toilets and you can have a lawn here which by this point downtown Philadelphia was almost unheard of.

When they tried to sell it in the late 50s they referred to it as the Charles Adams house.

Everybody thought this was the house on the Adams family TV show or in the Adams family cartoons.

It was not.

It is a gothic revival mansion that happens to have a tower.

I often will tell the story, I have this image of the Haineses who lived over at Wick or the Johnson family whose famous houses still survive.

Coming by here on a Saturday afternoon in the buck board, these good old Quakers, and saying, "Oh my God, they put a tower on it.

What on earth are they doing?"

And periodically we have people stop by thinking we're a church, which we're not, but the place comes with a lot of interesting stories.

I think it's a way to get into another time and think what it was like.

So very often people want to hear spooky stories in this house because everybody associates Gothic architecture with scary.

In the early 1960s the neighborhood had changed a great deal and the last owner occupier died in 1956.

Her heirs were in the process of selling it to a company that was going to tear it down and build a gas station here.

Block after block of Victorian masterpiece was bulldozed.

Just gone.

Which is just heartbreaking to us now.

And like so much of the worldwide history of historic preservation, two ladies, we are told, walked around the neighborhood with a clipboard and a coffee can and raised the money to stop the bulldozers.

Sadly we lost the barn that was out back in 1964 but they saved it and in the 11 years that followed until our incorporation in 1975 we had great archivists and curators and architects who essentially took the place apart like a giant jigsaw puzzle to figure out what these rooms would have been used for, what it was like to live here.

One of our core missions for a long time has been to act as a community center.

It's great, we offer tours two to five days a week.

We have a schools program, we have a senior citizen outreach program, but we also work just as a place where the community can feel that this is theirs.

It was built 60 years ago and today we are still supported by our members.

We encourage everyone to come.

We need you here.

The historic structures of Germantown need your support so please come out for this and other things.

As one of our members is fond of saying in ancient Hebrew the word Ebenezer means a pile of stones that the Israelites would stack to show that a miracle had happened there.

This big old pile of stones is my miracle and we still hope to find more.

Now to the Gospel of Karaoke and how a church in Camden is giving folks a chance to lift their voices in praise.

Y'all ready for Gospel Karaoke?

Jesus, we are fixed every day.

Oh yeah.

I wanted to create a community of people that would be able to come together to be able to showcase their gifts and talents in a safe place, in a safe space.

My relationship to the Victory Temple Community Church in Camden, New Jersey, the church is like a second home.

My church, my community, we have like a really good body of people that know how to show you love and embrace you and make you want to be able to come back and participate and be a part of something greater than ourselves.

I want to say this at Voices of Hope, one of the reasons that I keep coming back is that you come up here and you offer your gift any way that God has given it to you.

So we're going to save all judgments and critiques and instead we're going to give love and encouragement.

That's what we're going to do.

I tell people all the time now Showtime at the Apollo was one thing but standing in front of a black church that's something else.

We're going to go ahead and get started with our Voices of Hope sign up at the number one spot.

Let's show some love and encouragement to Kenya.

So many people have been doing karaoke.

I've seen different places doing it and I was like, wow, this really looks intriguing.

So I wanted to try to twist it up a little bit and we'll do gospel karaoke.

Music and ministry goes hand in hand because we're still using our voices and being vocal.

So you're using your voice to be able to speak and minister to people.

You're also using your gifts and talents to be able to sing.

Thank you!

[applause] Voices of Hope, the evening usually works where we've been doing Gospel Artist Night for the past couple of months.

Is Fred Hammond night?

Yes!

Okay, y'all got some favorite Fred Hammond songs?

The DJ will start playing music for about 15 minutes or so.

We have an open mic sign up sheet so we have like a list of 10 people, have like 5 minutes per person.

Let's go ahead and add his name on the board real quick.

We have people come from all over, not just Camden, New Jersey.

We have people coming from Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and even the UK.

So it's just a worldwide reach.

The atmosphere is life changing.

I had somebody that came in with heaviness and when they left it felt like the burden was lifted up off of them.

It's a great fun atmosphere.

Jesus can feel.

It's a beautiful community of people coming together.

It really changes you.

That's what Voices of Hope is.

It's allowing people to be able to see that they still have a story and that they still have hope and that they also have a voice and that hope still exists.

(upbeat music) - Grab your popcorn and let's head to the movies for this week's Flicks with Patrick Stoner.

(film reel clicking) - I wanted to say that I'm so happy to be here with the two people that I love most, who I feel most loved by and all.

(gasps) - A body was found early this morning that we have reason to believe is your wife's.

- Imperfect Women is a series that begins with a murder.

There were three friends.

There was Elizabeth Moss and Kerry Washington, and one of their friends gets killed.

Leslie Odom Jr., Hamilton's Burr, is a big brother figure.

I talked with Carrie, who is executive producer.

- I think always with great actors, the listening can be even more captivating than the speaking.

And that was really fun for me as an executive producer.

I love being in the post-production process and in the edit.

I always say the edit is the final rewrite where you're dialing up and down performances and knowing when to have the camera on an actor even though they're not speaking.

Those decisions are really important, but you want to be working with actors of this caliber, somebody like Leslie Odom, who can bring that kind of constant reality and just like excellent listening dropped in presence because then you know you can go to them anytime in the scene.

Well since you mentioned the big guy, he wasn't there right at the beginning.

He got added on.

At what point along the way did you say to yourself, you know who we need here?

Every single person was our moonshot, our dream.

So when it got time to cast Donovan, I was like, well, my dream would be Leslie Odom, but I'm sure he's not available, and I don't know if he'll do it.

And, um, but I texted him and sort of begged him.

- Oh, please don't go begging.

- Because we're friends.

The text comes, I mean, I think what it speaks to is the way that Elizabeth and Carrie have built their lives, not just their careers.

It's a community of actors that revere the choices that you've made and how you've grown yourselves.

We watched you guys grow up.

There was no begging.

There's an ask to work with Carrie and to build off of that tremendous respect and esteem that I have for her, to get to play her bossy big brother in this was like, my anytime I hope we get two or three more seasons anytime.

Well, you can't because it's a limited series.

Well, so so so they say I mean if enough fans turn out and demand a second season who would say no.

I see.

Thank you both very much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

(bell ringing) - Thank you so much for joining me here at Ministry of Awe.

And you oughta know that there is so much more I wanna see, so I'm gonna go check it out.

Good night.

[MUSIC] [LAUGH] How does it know?

She said, "Hello there, don't just stand there."

Last but not least, you've got to check out the bathroom.

Come here.

[toilet flush] She says, "Thank you for your deposit."

[music]