Zion Bible Institute (Part 1)

One afternoon this past December, while I was back in Rhode Island for Christmas, the day was unseasonably warm, so I decided to take a walk around town. It has been a couple of years since I’ve spent any length of time in Barrington, so I thought it might be interesting to just look around and see what had changed in my hometown. Going down Middle Highway, I happened to walk past an old building I had always been vaguely aware of but had never really paid any particular attention to:

I knew generally that this was part of an institution called the Zion Bible Institute, which I knew next to nothing about. Despite growing up a couple blocks down the road of this Institute, I had only ever been on the campus once (at night, when a friend was emphatic about wanting to go streaking across it for some reason…needless to say he lost his ardor as soon as we actually got there). I didn’t know how big the place actually was, or even what age group the place was catered towards.

In fact, I had always assumed it was a private high school or prep school of some sort, and only recently discovered (thanks Wikipedia!) that it was an actual four-year college, whose “sole purposes is to teach and train students for Pentecostal ministry for the spread of the Christian gospel.” It was founded in 1924, and has apparently had more name changes than Ron Artest: School of the Prophets, Mount Zion Bible School, Zion Bible Institute, Zion Gospel Temple, and now Northpoint Bible College. In 1985 it moved into the Barrington campus (replacing a different Christian college with an equally ludicrous history of name changes: Bethel Bible Training School, Dudley Bible Institute, Providence Bible Institute, and Barrington College), which it left for Haverhill, Massachusetts in 2008.

The last time I had walked by the place had been before going to college in 2006. Until that day I had no inkling that the place had been shut down. I walked along the sidewalk bordering one edge of the campus and the place looked like it was abandoned. But most of the view is blocked by hedges of trees and several cars were parked next to the main entrance, which was chained off with a “No Trespassing” sign. I continued on my walk, but had the place in the back of my mind for the next couple of days. In the end, driven by curiosity, I decided to go back and see what was actually going on.

I ended up visiting the campus on three separate occasions. The first time, where most of my pictures come from, I walked around most of the campus for about forty-five minutes and briefly entered the main building. The second time, I returned with several friends around twilight and walked around for about twenty minutes (we saw a couple large owls, which was suitably spooky). Finally, I quickly visited the campus one more time to take a few more pictures and poke around more of the interior of the main building.

I ended up taking 173 pictures. If you are interested, you can see all of them here. Over the course of two installments, I am going to present the best/most interesting of the pictures (I have shrunk the size of the photos to preserve the formatting of the site. Right click and select “Open image in new tab” or go to the linked album to see the full-sized pictures).

In Part 1, I will show external pictures of the campus (as well as photos taken through the windows of buildings I couldn’t easily enter). In Part 2, I will show the internal pictures from the main building.

Speaking of the main building, that seems like the best place to start. I showed the picture at the beginning of the article, but here it is again:

That is the only building on the campus you can clearly see from the entrance; it is also the largest (50,000 square feet) and most impressive building on the campus. True to our theme of random name changes, the building was various referred to at different times in the school’s history as Belton Court, Ferrin Hall, and Gibson Memorial Building. I will refer to it as Belton Court, as it is by that name that the building was inducted into the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. It was constructed as a mansion for a wealthy RI businessman and politician named Frederick Stanhope Peck in 1905; it was originally the manor house for an estate of over 800 acres. This will be completely meaningless to anyone not from Barrington, RI, but the Peck family originally owned the land that is now Osamequin Bird Sanctuary (and notorious clandestine meeting spot for activities not approved of by people at Christian colleges). For a surprisingly detailed history of the building’s history and architecture, the application for historic status can be read in full here.

Walking around the left side of Belton Court, you emerge into a courtyard, complete with a bare flagpole and a reflecting pool partially filled with murky water.

I know that water doesn’t literally rot, but the water in that pool was just absolutely rotten.

Glancing through broken windows revealed scenes from what looked like a hasty evacuation. Like everyone left in the middle of the night, grabbing whatever they could in a mad rush to escape.

After passing through the courtyard, there is a small cluster of buildings. One of them is simply marked “Office”, while another appeared to be a work shed.

Again, everything seemed to be frozen in time. It didn’t look like a place that had been neatly packed and closed up.

Continuing past the shed, there is a small wooded section of the property, with the paths completely overgrown. In this picture you can just barely make out the frame of a trellis or similar structure that marked the path, which is completely invisible beneath the undergrowth and leaf cover.

Also buried in the leaves is a realtor’s sign marking the sale of the 39 acre property. Apparently, after Zion Bible Institute shipped out, the property was bought by private developers (for $3.5 million), who have proceeded to do nothing with it. Maybe they are just waiting for it to be sufficiently creepy to film a zombie movie on-site. Or turn it into a nursing home, which is almost the same thing.

Past the wooded section is another cluster of buildings, including the student center and dining hall.

Through the windows, you can see the bulletin boards still covered with the various flotsam and jetsam of campus life.

I really wanted to explore the inside of that building, but couldn’t find a way inside that wouldn’t have involved being actively destructive, which I decided was a bad idea, as I was already trespassing just being there. So I continued past the dining hall to the front of the men’s dorm building. A sign taped to the inside of the the door window reads, “Women are not allowed in this DORM Without Direct Permission from the HRA or Resident Director.”

Looking through that window reveals what may be the most unsettling potted plant I’ve ever seen. Something about the emptiness of the entrance hall save for the scattered leaves sent a shiver down my spine.

Increasingly, the patterns of destruction and decay began to feel ominous. The first thing I could think of was the world of “The Last of Us” (take a look at some of the concept art). Although this place only closed in 2008, and presumably in an orderly fashion, it looks far more like decades-old ruins of a civilization. There’s something apocalyptic about the moss and weeds cracking brick and cement. On the other side of the dorm, a little vestibule connected two blocks of dormitory.

Notice the hole in the wall on the left? Looking through there into the building interior gave me my favorite shots from the whole trip.

The green on the ground is moss. The slight glare at the top corner of the above picture is from a hole in the ceiling. To quote Buzz Aldrin, “Beautiful, beautiful. Magnificent desolation.”

Next to the dorm is the weed-choked parking lot. The patterns of the growth breaking through the pavement are oddly intricate.

The next building you come across appears to be another dormitory. I assume it was the women’s dorm, but I never found any signs or markings. All of the doors looked like they had been barricaded, and one of them looked like it bad been overrun.

Gazing through the shattered remnants of the door revealed a dark hallway. It is amazing how dark the interior of buildings can be without artificial lighting, even in the middle of the afternoon.

From here, I circled back towards the back of the student center to find the delivery docks by the dining hall and bookstore (if you look closely, you can see the sign on the wall reads, “Book Store Deliveries”). If you look even closer, you can see a single white candle left in front of the door at center. That was the first evidence I found of other people having been here recently; it was surrounded by several burnt-up match-sticks. The only other signs of life were birds and a couple of deer, that I unfortunately didn’t get a picture of.

See that stairway leading down on the left there? Of course it was another creepy scene out of a horror film!

Continuing to walk around the sides of the student center, you come across a big bank of windows, through which you can make out what appears to have been a stage or performance hall. In the middle are the smashed remains of a computer that appears to have been dropped from the balcony.

From here, I returned to Belton Court, where I happened to find a way inside. Go to the album to see some more shots of the campus itself.

Next week, Part 2 will show you the interior of Belton Court.