Church steeples mark significant points in the city’s spiritual realm. They proclaim the essential function of private congregations as moral beacons where the citizens are free to organize themselves in relation to the moral and transcendent.
 |
| Blandford Church, 1735 |
The principal streets in downtown Petersburg, such as Sycamore and
Bollingbrook, were lined by closely spaced commercial buildings. In Virginia, civic
buildings, including churches, were traditionally placed in significant locations above and beyond
the rules governing the positioning of basic commercial buildings. They were often built of permanent and
expensive materials and occupied central locations for easy access. Petersburg’s
public buildings, such as the Market House, Courthouse, and Custom House were
placed on secondary street from the regular streetfront or set apart in open squares. Some,
like the Courthouse or Merchants' Exchange, were provided with domes or clock
towers that asserted their significance to the city's political and commercial
life.
The first churches, those built by parishes of the Church of
England, were state churches, and as suited buildings that were part of the
civic structure, they were placed in positions apart from the grid of valuable commercial and residential lots. This meant
that they were place either near the center of a public lot set apart or on a
central or axial location in relation to the street grid. Blandford Church, which predated the city,
was located outside the platted extent of the city.
Episcopal parishes in Virginia, as members of the former established church,
sometimes selected central locations for new building projects in the early
years of the nineteenth century, even though they no longer had direct access
to the planning and funding powers of the government. Blandford CHurch, with
its inconvenient location, was closed in 1810. A new church for the city was
placed on a lot purchased next to the courthouse on West Hill, from which it
dominated the city’s landscape until 1837, when it was
displaced to make way for the present courthouse, which required
the entire top of the hill for a site. From then on, St. Paul’s, as
the original congregation was renamed, would one of several traditional lots along the city streets.
Unlike European state
churches, which were traditionally placed in central or axially aligned locations, post-revolutionary American
churches were more embedded in the urban fabric, in keeping with the
private nature of American religious practice. Like St. Paul;s, the city's other churches, in the era following disestablishment, were
placed on conventional lots conforming to the grid.
Because commerce dominated the main routes through town so completely, churches were often placed on side streets like Tabb, Union, or Market, one or more
blocks removed from the commercial routes. Churches serving the black community
were built in areas of African American housing.
Churches stand out, at the same time, from the surrounding tissue
by means of exceptional architecture, free-standing forms, and tall steeples. They were also provided with corner locations, deep setbacks, and wide porticoes. These features signify their status as urban-scale institutions and the key contribution they make to the public good.
Church steeples mark significant points in the city’s
spiritual realm. They proclaim the essential function of private congregations
as moral beacons where the citizens are free to organize themselves in relation
to the moral and transcendent. Like other
urban-scale elements of the city, they are most often placed where they
correspond to nodes in the urban transportation system.
Many buildings in the city share the proportions of classical
architecture while omitting the temple front, columns, and the other well-known
parts of the five canonic orders. Churches and civic buildings generally
have made the most intense uses of the orders, to a degree corresponding to
their significance within the civic fabric. The orders, when used appropriately
and augmented by domes, spires, pediments, and cupolas, have provided a
meaningful contribution to the city’s understanding of itself as a political entity.
Frame churches, typical for start-up congregations, were mostly replaced by brick in the early
nineteenth century. Churches built before 1830 were more domestic in form and
scale than those that came after. Arched window heads, Flemish-bond brickwork,
and simple cornices tend to characterize churches built in the first quarter of
the nineteenth century. These include the 1805 Episcopal Church on the Court
Square, the 1818 Union Street Methodist Church, and the 1815 Presbyterian
Church on Tabb Street.
More classical forms were chosen for churches by the 1830s and
40s, including temple fronts, ornate Greek Revival detailing, and tall
spires. The first of these Greek Revival temple form churches was built in 1837
to replace the building on Courthouse Square that was demolished by the county
to build the new courthouse. Its elegant form may be connected to the
architectural designs of Calvin Pollard, the New York-based designer of the new
courthouse or to its builders. It was followed by the High Street Presbyterian
Church about 1842, which built a brick temple-form church with an inset entry
flanked by pilasters. Two of the city’s
most prominent surviving congregations, Tabb Street Presbyterian (1844) and Washington Street
Methodist (1842), continue to be identified with impressive Greek Revival structures
built in the 1840s. As they grew over the next century they continued to use
the Greek Revival vocabulary.
 |
| Gillfield Baptist Church, 1878. |
Ryan Smith, in Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses [Chapel Hill: U of
North Carolina Press, 2006] suggests that the change in the architectural forms
employed by American Protestantism was connected, not just with new styles
imported from the English Anglo-Catholic movement, but with a transformation
spurred by the rapid growth of the Roman Catholic Church. In the first place,
the new forms served to differentiate the sacred more clearly from the secular,
and secondly, they appropriated the power of the architectural settings of
Roman Catholic Church worship in response to the perceived challenges posed by
its growing influence. Ironically the city’s Catholic parish was housed in a
frame temple-form church completed in 1842 and not replaced by a Gothic Revival
building until 1894.
The enthusiasm for Gothic (and Romanesque) architectural modes
became even more pronounced after the Civil War, when both white and black
congregations across a range of denominations built large brick churches with
similar asymmetrical fronts. These include First Baptist (Harrison Street) (1870/1884), Gillfield
Baptist Church (1878), each with two towers, and St. John’s Episcopal (1897), West End Baptist
(1900), and Second Baptist (c1905, demolished), each with a single tower. The preference for two assymetrical towers on Gothic churches in Petersburg lasted for many
decades. The Tabernacle, First Ebeneezer, and Zion Baptist congregations each
built these kinds of related Gothic-inspired churches in the first decade of the twentieth century, as did the Oak
Street African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
The last three Gothic churches, St. Stephens Episcopal and Christ
(now Christ and Grace) Episcopal and Washington Street Christian were built in
1918 and 1925, and c. 1950 respectively. At least one church, High Street
Methodist, concealed their temple-form church behind a new asymmetrical
Romanesque-style front in 1897. In the early twentieth century, however,
several congregations, notably First Baptist (Washington Street) (1931),
Memorial Methodist Church (c1910), and Trinity Methodist Church (1928),
abandoned Gothic to once again worship in temple-form classically detailed
buildings.
African Methodist Episcopal Zion
 |
Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church (Colored) on N side
Halifax between
Sycamore and S. Union on 1885 Sanborn Map
|
 |
Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church (Colored) on N side
Halifax between
Sycamore and S. Union on 1908 Sanborn Map
|
 |
| Oak Street African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church |
Oak Street African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
25 W. Wythe (formerly Oak) Street
Baptist
 | |||||
| First Baptist Church (Harrison Street), 1870, 1884. |
 |
| First Baptist Church (Harrison Street) on 1885 Sanborn Map. |
First Baptist Church (Harrison Street)
236 Harrison Street
firstbaptistpetersburg.org
 |
| First Baptist Church (Washington Street), 1868. |
 |
| First Baptist Church (Washington Street), 1931. |
First Baptist Church (Washington Street)
First Baptist (Washington Street) began as the Market Street
Baptist Church. The congregation built its first church on the west side of
Long Market Street, just south of Brickhouse Run in 1817. A new church was
built on the corner of Market and High Streets in 1841. This is the third
building on the Washington Street site, to which the congregation moved in
1856. The first Gothic Revival church, which was immediately adjacent, burned
in 1865, was replaced in 1868, and its successor was demolished after this
building was dedicated in 1931.
 |
| First Ebeneezer Baptist Church (Trinity Missionary Baptist Church of God in Christ), c 1905. |
 |
| Ebeneezer First Baptist Church on 1908 Sanborn Map. |
First Ebeneezer Baptist Church (Trinity Missionary Baptist Church
of God in Christ)
233 Halifax Road
First Ebenezer Baptist Church is shown on the NW side of Halifax
Road between Liberty and Gill Streets on the 1908 and 1915 Sanborn Maps. It was
not present in 1903. In 1945, it became the site of the newly founded Holy
Family Catholic Church, organized for the Black catholic citizens of
Petersburg, but now no longer operating.
 |
| Gillfield Baptist Church, 1878. Historic Photo. |
 |
| Gillfield First Baptist Church (E side Perry St near Brown on 1885 Sanborn Map |
Gillfield Baptist Church
209 Perry Street
http://www.gillfieldbaptistchurchpetersburg.org/
Gillfield Baptist Church began in Prince George in 1788 as an
integrated church known as the Davenport Church. The congregation separated and
moved to the Pocahontas neighborhood of Petersburg in 1800. The congregation
took the name “the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of
Petersburg.” In 1818-19 the land in the suburb of Gillfield was
purchased and a series of frame churches were built, succeeded by a brick
building constructed before 1865. The present building was completed in 1878
and named Gillfield Baptist Church. When built, it was the largest church in
the city, seating 1,600.The architecturally unusual church makes use of the Romanesque round-arched style. It is the city's first to feature two asymmetrical towers, one of which is octagonal and provided with Gothic battlements.
 |
| Grove Avenue Baptist Church shown on 1908 Sanborn Map |
Grove Avenue Baptist Church
Grove Avenue
Grove Avenue Baptist Church was founded in the early 20th c as a mission of First Baptist. The congregation altered the eighteenth-century James Baird House by
removing the second floor and adding a Gothic front. The building has since
been restored to its original appearance as the headquarters of the Historic
Petersburg Foundation.
 |
| Second Baptist Church, c. 1900. |
 |
| Byrne Street Baptist Church on E side Byrne Street S of Halifax on 1885 Sanborn Map. |
 |
| Second Baptist Church shown at SW corner Sycamore and Halifax on 1908 Sanborn Map. |
Second Baptist Church (Demolished)
Byrne St.; Sycamore and Halifax sts.
Second Baptist Church began in 1854, with eleven members and was
first located on Byrne Street and called Byrne Street Baptist Church. When the church moved to a new
Romanesque-inspired structure on the corner of Sycamore and Halifax in the late
nineteenth or early twentieth century, it changed its name to Second Baptist
Church. The church moved out of downtown Petersburg to a site on Johnson Road
several decades ago.
 |
| Tabernacle Baptist Church |
 |
| Tabernacle Baptist Church (Baptist Tabernacle (Col.)) shown on 1908 Sanborn Map. |
Tabernacle Baptist Church
418 Halifax Street
http://www.tbcptg.org.
Tabernacle Baptist church was founded “as “a
‘holy hill’ of God” in 1890.
Third Baptist Church
Now located on Farmer Street
Third Baptist Church was located on Rock Street at Lavender Lane
in 1891. No image available.
 |
| West End Baptist Church (Harvest International Gospel Baptist Church), 1900. |
 |
| West End Baptist Church, historic postcard. |
West End Baptist Church (Harvest International Gospel Baptist
Church)
1017 W Washington Street
West End Baptist Church was founded in the 1870's by members of
First Baptist Church on Washington Street to serve the population
in the city’s growing western suburbs. They acquired a Presbyterian church building in 1878 and in 1900 built a large structure with a dramatic angled
tower. The congregation farther west in 1996 and the church became the home of
Harvest International Gospel Church.
 |
| Zion Baptist Church, early 20th c. |
 |
Baptist Church (Col.) on S side High Street at the top of Canal
Street on 1908 Sanborn Map
|
Byrne Street
Zion Baptist Church was organized in 1891 by members of Third
Baptist Church, then on Rock Street, and now on Farmer Street. The congregation
purchased the old Byrne Street Baptist Church building when it was vacated by
that congregation. The current building was built in the early twentieth
century by the Zion Baptist congregation to replace the original structure.
Catholic
 |
| St. Joseph's Catholic Church,1894 |
 |
| St. Joseph's Catholic Church historic interior view |
 |
| St. Joseph''s Catholic Church interior |
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church
St. Joseph’s Catholic Church was first housed in
a frame temple-form church on the corner of Washington and Market Streets,
built in 1841-42. The parish was organized in 1820. The present Gothic Revival
building replaced it in 1894.
St. Joseph’s Church was built in 1896 on the site
of an earlier church built in 1842. The parish is housed in a finely detailed
French Gothic Revival structure in an historically built-up area of downtown
Petersburg. The church, set back within a landscaped lot, effectively anchors
the corner of Market and Washington streets. The red brick structure with stone
trim is flanked by two dramatic towers topped by copper-colored pointed
spires. The southwestern corner tower is
a major landmark in the urban landscape of the city from a distant vantage
point.
The nave and chancel are both included within a single
gable-fronted, rectangular structure. The low side walls are characterized by
pointed arch windows set between strip pilasters. The front facade is raised on
a tall rusticated foundation interrupted by the central entry door, set within
a shallow gabled element. It is located below a tall, traceried window in the
center of the gable. A shallow apse at the rear holds the north end of the
chancel.
Church Form and Furnishings
St. Joseph’s, in contrast to most Protestant
churches, was slow to develop extensive supplementary architecture on
site. Parishioners arrived for daily or
weekly masses, confession, and other liturgical and sacramental activities by
the big central front door. Since the site was limited in size, few amenities
were provided in the building. Vestibules to the rear provided specialized
access for specific lay and clerical activities. The adjoining rectory gave the
priests serving the parish direct access to the sanctuary.
Educational efforts and social events were concentrated on the
parish’s school, opened in 1875, and rebuilt in 1916, across town
on Franklin Street. A parish hall was built next to the school in 1932,
The interior of the church and its furnishings were carefully
designed to emphasize the church’s focus on both the immanence and
transcendence of God among His people. The architecture focused parishioners’
attention on the high altar and the reservation of the host in a central
tabernacle. Subsidiary altars, devotional images, lighting and stained glass
windows supported a iconic program that was carefully coordinated with the use
and form of the room. Musicians in the gallery at the rear provided carefully
coordinated choral and organ music that emphasized the transcendent nature of
the celebrations held in the room. Bells
in the tower tolled regularly to remind the entire community of the parish’s
witness in the city.
St. Joseph’s resembles many other parish churches
in the region. It was well funded, built of rich and carefully presented
materials, and designed within a carefully controlled sense of hierarchy.
Gradations in both in use of and access to space were closely aligned to the
Church’s understanding of the nature of the Holy. The hierarchical
design included circulation patterns. The sanctuary or chancel was not designed
to be traversed as part of the ordinary circulation through the building. While
lay people entered from the street through a variety of doors depending on
their destination, the priest entered the sanctuary directly from his residence
to perform services or to hear confessions.
St. Joseph’s Church took its place in the city of
Petersburg as one of a number architecturally distinguished religious
buildings. While the original building was similar to other temple-form
antebellum churches, the choice of Gothic-inspired architecture for the new
structure followed a pattern established among the several post Civil-War
churches located along Washington Street. By means of its soaring triple-stage
spire dominating Washington Street, the parish summoned its members to church
while adding its important voice to the three-dimensional map of Petersburg’s
spiritual landscape.
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
 |
Washington Street Christian Church (Reconciliation Fellowship), mid-20th c.
|
 |
| Washington Street Christian Church shown on 1908 Sanborn Map on N side Washington Street between Jones and Hazel |
Washington Street Christian Church (Reconciliation Fellowship)
W. Washington Street
This mid-twentieth century church was likely built by the
Washington Street Christian (Disciples of Christ) congregation to replace the
church shown in 1908 on the Sanborn map.
Episcopal
 |
| Blandford Church, c 1736 |
The Church on Wells Hill (Blandford Church)
Bristol Parish Church [Blandford Church] was built of carefully crafted brick about 1736 on a hill near what would become the city of Petersburg. It was clearly designed to serve the planters of the region as much as the residents of the small settlement at the Falls of the Appomattox River. The church began as a rectangular structure about 64 by 29 feet size wuth a gabled roof, a modillion cornice, and special decorative rubbed brick at the entrance, windows and corners. A north wing was added later in the eighteenth century. The building was abandoned after disestablishment of the church in Virginia and a new church was built in the town in 1805. The ruins were stabilized in 1882 and the building was restored in 1901 to serve as a chapel and mortuary and as a memorial to the Confederacy.
The architectural and liturgical world in which the church was built was slow to change and deeply rooted in local tradition. Beginning in the nineteenth century, however, the context of Anglican worship and of architectural theory became a source of tension within the diocese and parish as the church’s understanding of its role in the community altered. The parish’s authority as arbiter of the city’s spiritual life required careful maintenance of its position in the vital urban order.
The Church on West Hill
In
1791, Robert Bolling IV gave a part of West Hill in front of the
present courthouse for a courthouse square. He also sold a lot on side
of the courthouse for the site of a new church to replace the outmoded
one at Blandford. The courthouse, of which no picture remains, was built
right away, but the church was not completed until 1805. They both
stood above the little town like a kind of acropolis. Robert Bolling IV
also built a house nearby on West Hill where he lived before he
constructed his massive dwelling on Centre Hill in 1823.
 |
| Plat of 1809 showing church, courthouse and prison at left and Robert Bolling's House at right |
The drawings of the Church of 1805 (top), the Prison (left), and
the Court House of 1793 (bottom) on a plat of 1809 are probably less than
accurate, but do indicate a hipped roof for each of the buildings and a cupola
on the courthouse.
 |
| This elevation of the Episcopal Church of 1837 is from the drawings of William Simpson, Sr. |
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Union Street
St. Paul’s is the descendent of the
congregation of Bristol Parish that worshipped in Blandford Church beginning in
1737. After the Revolution, the parish abandoned the remote Blandford Church
most the year and held services in the courthouse, until 1805, when new church
was completed on a lot that was purchased facing the public square next to the
courthouse. The church was funded by a public lottery and was to made available
to other ministers if not otherwise used by the Episcopalians. This building was demolished in 1837 to make
way for the new city courthouse. A new building, known by this time as St. Paul’s
Church, was built. This church sat back about fifty feet on the opposite side of
Sycamore, on axis with the west end of Franklin Street. This Greek Revival
temple-form structure, with an inset entry flanked by Doric columns, burned in
1854. It was drawn by William Simpson, Sr., possibly from an original
architectural elevation.
 |
| St. Paul's Episcopal Church, built 1857 |
The present Gothic Revival structure, by this time known as St.
Paul’s, was completed in 1857.
The building, initially designed, like most of the city’s
Protestant churches, to serve as much an auditorium for preaching as for
liturgical services, was updated in keeping with changes associated with the
Virginia version of the Oxford Movement high-church reforms. The central pulpit
was removed in 1903 and a deep chancel added. This was equipped with collegiate
(inward facing) choir desks and a central altar and mosaic reredos depicting
the life of Christ. The tower contains a
chime of nine bells that ring out daily over the city. These are said to be the
“only notable set” of bells in the state that date from
the Antebellum period.
 |
| Grace Episcopal Church in the 20th c |
 | ||||
| Grace Episcopal Church, built 1859 |
Grace Episcopal Church (called Christ Episcopal on 1908 Sanborn Map)
High Street
(demolished)
Grace Episcopal Church was founded in 1841 as a mission in the
Old Street (Grove Avenue) area. A church was established on Piamingo Street in
1842 and a brick building was completed on Old Street in 1851. The congregation
grew quickly and acquired a lot on High Street and began a building just before
the start of the Civil War. This was not to be completed until 1870 and was demolished
in 1960 after the Grace Church congregation merged with Christ Church to form Christ and Grace Church.
 |
| St. Stephen's Episcopal Church interior |
 |
| St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, 1918 |
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church on Perry Street on Sanborn Map in 1885 between Lawrence and Brown Street
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church
228 Halifax Street
http://stepchurch.org/
St. Stephen's Episcopal Church was organized in 1867, in the
immediate aftermath of the Civil War. Worship was first held in a former
Confederate hospital in Poplar Lawn. A new church was built on Perry Street in 1868.
This structure was sold to the British American tobacco Co. and the current
building was built on Halifax Street in 1918.
 |
Christ Episcopal Church (Christ and Grace Episcopal Church)
|
Christ Episcopal Church (Christ and Grace Episcopal Church)
1545 S. Sycamore Street
http://www.christandgrace.us/
Christ Episcopal Church was an outgrowth of Grace Church on High
Street, founded in 1925 in response to the movement of the population to the
new new suburb of Walnut Hill. It merged with Grace's congregation after that church closed in 1953.
 |
| St. John’s Episcopal Church |
 |
| St. John’s Episcopal Church, 1897. |
842 W. Washington Street
St. John’s Episcopal Church was founded in 1868
as a mission in Petersburg’s growing western suburbs. The first
building on this site was of frame construction built in 1868. The current
brick Gothic Revival building was constructed in 1897 on the same site. It was
designed by Petersburg architect Harrison Waite. The Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin was
rector from 1893-1903.
Good Shepherd Episcopal Chapel
(Demolished)
Good Shepherd Episcopal Chapel stood at Washington Street and
Crater Road in the Blandford section [No photo].
Jewish
 |
| Synagogue on E side Union Street N of Tabb on 1885 Sanborn Map |
 |
| Historic image of Rodef Sholem Synagogue |
Rodef Sholem Synagogue
(Demolished)
The first synagogue in Petersburg was Rodef Sholem, begun in
1858, although services had been held previously. They worshipped in temporary
accommodations until 1874, when they bought the former Market Street (later
First) Baptist Church building at High and Market. They later bought a lot
behind the Custom House on Union Street and built a permanent structure, seen here, in a round-arched style.
Methodist
 |
| High Street Methodist Church 1844, 1899 |
High Street Methodist Church
High Street
High Street
High Street Methodist Church was founded in 1844 by a division of
the city’s Methodists into eastern and western stations (sections).
The eastern section became known as Washington Street Methodist Church after
the location of its new building and the western section took the name High
Street from its address. The original temple-form brick church with round-arched
windows is concealed behind an asymmetrical Romanesque front added in 1897-99.
The building is currently unoccupied. The building occupies a dramatic site at
a marked bend in High Street.
 |
| Market St Methodist Church |
 |
| Market Street Methodist Church (Free Temple Outreach Ministry), 1859 |
 |
Market Street Methodist Church
shown on the west side of Long Market at Halifax on 1885 Sanborn Map
|
Market Street Methodist Church (Free Temple Outreach Ministry)
214 South Market Street
Market Street Methodist Church was founded in 1857 and its
building completed in 1859. It was begun after a revival in 1857 increased the
numbers at the Washington Street church. The congregation left its old home in
1924 and, renamed Trinity Methodist Church, built a new building on Sycamore
Street. In 1924 the earlier building became the home of the Disciples of Christ
and later, in 1954, the Mount Olivet Baptist Church. It occupies an important
location at the intersection of Halifax Road and S. Long Market Street.
 |
| Trinity Methodist Church (interior photo from Estey Organ site) |
 |
Trinity Methodist Church, 1928
|
Trinity Methodist Church
215 S. Sycamore Street
The former Market Street Methodist congregation, renamed Trinity
Methodist Church, built an elaborate new building between 1921 and 1928, where
the congregation still worships. The stone-clad Colonial Revival structure,
designed by R.E. Mitchell, was a sharp departure from both the Greek and Gothic
Revival churches that preceded it.
 |
Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church (Ekklesia), 1913
|
Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church (Ekklesia)
1124 W. Washington Street
This temple-form church was built in 1913 to serve the western
suburbs. It housed the congregation formerly known as West Street Methodist
Church, originally Battersea Mission, that had been located on nearby West
Street since the 1850s. By 1921, the church had 864 members.
 |
| Union Street Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. 1818;1842 |
Union Street Col. M. E. Church on E side Union Street in 1885 and
on E side Harding Street S of Halifax in 1908 on Sanborn Maps
Union Street Colored Methodist Episcopal Church
22 E. Washington Street (Demolished)
This church was established by a separation of the black and
white members of the city’s original Methodist congregation in 1842, when
Washington Street Methodist Church was built and the African American members
received the old building. The building was torn down in 1903 and the
congregation moved to the Harding Street Colored Methodist Church by 1908.
 |
| Washington Street Methodist Church, 1842, 1890 (portico), 1922 (wings). |
 |
| Washington Street Methodist Church interior looking northwest |
 |
| Washington Street Methodist Church interior looking south |
 |
| Washington Street Methodist Church, 1843 |
 |
| Washington Street Methodist Church, 1888 |
 |
| Washington Street Methodist Church, 1907 |
22 E. Washington Street
The first Methodist meeting house was constructed on Harrison
Street in 1774-5. This was succeeded by a church on Market Street in 1788. It
was a “plain, two-story wooden building with its gable end to
Market Street [Wyatt 1943, 29]. A new brick church, known as Union Street
Methodist, was completed on Union Street in 1818-20 (seen above). The black and
white members of the congregation separated in 1842, the year in which
Washington Street Methodist Church was built. The former church on Union Street
was received by the Black members of the congregation. The church was subject
to numerous alterations over the next eighty years, but at no time did the
congregation depart from a reliance on forms and details derived from published
examples of classical Greek architecture. The wings were added in 1922 to
create an unprecedented triple portico form. A full Greek Doric portico was
been added in 1890 and the original steeple was removed in 1907. It was the
leading Methodist congregation in the state for many decades. The elaborate Greek Revival interior is intact.
 |
| Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church, 1881. |
 |
| Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church shown on 1908 Sanborn Map |
Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church
Halifax Street at Mistletoe Street
The Wesley Methodist Church was organized in 1845 by members of
Washington Street Methodist Church and was in charge of that church for many
years. In the sea year the congregation acquired a lot on Halifax Street
opposite St. Mathews Street, on which they built a 30 x 50 foot frame building.
In 1879, the members relocated to a site at Halifax and Mistletoe Street and
built a two story brick church, completed in 1881. This building was replaced
by the extant structure in 1903. There were 528 members in 1937 [Richmond
Christian Advocate May 28, 1937]. The congregation moved to Colonial Heights in
1961 and sold the Petersburg building to the Third Baptist Church. The church
is currently unoccupied.
 |
| West Street Methodist Episcopal Church, c 1872. |
West Street Methodist Episcopal Church
West Street
West Street
Battersea Chapel was built as a mission in the Battersea
neighborhood through the personal efforts of Stephen G. Wells on lots on West
Street acquired in 1854. It was used as a field hospital during the Civil War.
West Street Methodist Church was formed as the Battersea Mission of the High
Street Methodist Church in 1872, later known as West End Mission. It became an
independent church in 1888, and in 1890 took the name West Street Church. In
1911, it relocated to Washington Street and was renamed Memorial Methodist
Church. West Street Methodist Episcopal Church was shown on the 1885 Sanborn Map.
Presbyterian
 |
| Tabb Street Presbyterian Church on 1885 Sanborn Map |
 | |
| Tabb Street Presbyterian Church,1844 |
 |
| Tabb Street Presbyterian Church |
Tabb Street
The city’s first Presbyterian congregation
began in 1812-13 and included many of the merchant families of Scottish
background. It met in a building on Tabb Street just east of the current
location of Tabb Street Presbyterian Church. A second building was built in
1823 across the street, just east of the Custom House. This burned in 1841 and
the present building was constructed on the north side of the street in 1844.
The church is one the city’s most impressive temple-form
buildings. The spire was removed in 1938.
 |
| Second Presbyterian Church, 1862 |
 |
| Second Presbyterian Church, 1862 |
Second Presbyterian Church
419 W Washington Street
Second Presbyterian Church was founded in 1851. It occupied an
existing church on High Street until this building was completed in 1862. The
design is attributed to the minister, Dr. Theodorick Pryor. Although damaged by
a fire in 1869, the church is the most sophisticated of the city’s
Gothic Revival churches, equipped with elaborate plaster medallions, cast iron
columns, and a large carved rostrum.
 |
| High Street Presbyterian Church [from an 1842 watercolor elevation by William S.Simpson, from Lost Virginia], c. 1843. |
(Demolished)
High Street Presbyterian Church was founded by a group of
Presbyterians who had left over a theological controversy in 1839. The church,
built after 1842, is seen in this elevation by William S. Simpson. The
classical temple-front building had brick strip pilasters, an inset central
entry, and a three-stage Greek Revival belfry. several lots west of Market
Street on the south side of High Street, closed when the congregation rejoined
Tabb Street, but was reopened as the home of Second Presbyterian Church when it
was organized in 1851. It was demolished in 1869 in favor of the row of brick
houses known as Baltimore Row.
 |
Old Street Presbyterian Church at end of Grove Avenue on 1885 Sanborn Map
|
Old Street Presbyterian Church
(Demolished)
 |
Presbyterian Church on S side Washington Street W of West Street
on 1908 Sanborn Map
|
 |
| Church (Glory of God Ministries), c. 1900. |
Church (Glory of God Ministries)
1001 West High Street
This c 1900 Gothic Revival Church in the western suburb of
Battersea is relatively well-preserved.
Seventh-Day Adventist
 |
| Shiloh Seventh-Day Adventist Church, c. 1950. |
Shiloh Seventh-Day Adventist
W. Washington Street
The date of founding of the congregation is not known. The Colonial-style building
appears to date from c 1950.
