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Posted on @rawstates
Buu Mon, the Baptist church that became a Vietnamese Buddhist temple
1986
Procter Street, Port Arthur, Texas
Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
The building on Procter Street went up as a Baptist church, served a Vietnamese Catholic congregation from 1976, and in 1986 was taken over by the abbot Thich Huyen Viet and his Buddhist community, who put a stupa where the steeple had been. The gardens he started in 1988 grow tropical and hardy lotuses and water lilies that draw collectors from well outside Texas. The temple anchors a Vietnamese population that numbered around sixteen hundred by 1980 and now crews most of the shrimp boats working out of Port Arthur.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: documented spot
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