In 2016, Preservation Maryland announced the Pleasant View Historic Site in Montgomery County as one of the organization’s first Six-to-Fix projects and working with the site’s Trustees to complete essential repair work. In tandem, the Trustees and the broader Quince Orchard community continued to research the site’s special history, and hat awesome history is now being shared through a documentary called Finding Fellowship.
ABOUT THE FILM
Finding Fellowship is a film by Jason Green and Kisha Davis, the children of Rev. Gerald Green, one of the Trustees of Pleasant View. The documentary traces the history of the land on which Pleasant View sits on through the ups-and-downs of keeping a church active in Montgomery County during the Civil Rights-era and into current times, including their plans for continued restoration work.
More from the Film Makers
The title Finding Fellowship is a double entendre. Fellowship is the name of the lane that two of the film’s subjects, Kisha and Jason, grew up on. This documentary has been about actively unearthing and finding the history of the community in which they grew up and the street that they grew up on is a wonderful symbol of that community. But the film is also about the power of people coming together in a shared interest and how that can only be achieved when actively pursued. In a world where we are often told that we are irreconcilably divided, we still believe in finding fellowship, and it’s this story that gives us hope.
ABOUT THE SITE
The Pleasant View Historic Site is comprised of the Quince Orchard Colored School, the Pleasant View Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Pleasant View Cemetery – each different resource with different needs for preservation. Encroaching development, deferred maintenance, and lack of funding was beginning to show on the historic properties. As a result of the Six-to-FIx partnership, Keast & Hood Structural Engineers generously donated staff time and expertise in Spring 2016 to conduct a structural condition assessment for the church and school. The document outlines what issues the buildings have and in which order the projects should be tackled. With this assessment in hand, the Trustees can now make a case to potential funders with a strong and accurate plan for stabilization and rehabilitation of the structures.
Keast & Hood donated an expert engineering evaluation of the Pleasant View Historic Site, 2016.