Mt Vernon Methodist Church

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Mt Vernon Methodist Church, later Mt Vernon United Methodist Church was a Methodist congregation which met in North Birmingham. It was organized in 1884. The surviving vacant church building at 2400 34th Avenue North was constructed in 1930. It was abandoned in 1975 as the congregation merged with Gardendale United Methodist Church to form Gardendale Mt Vernon United Methodist Church.

When it was founded, the church met in a frame building. The name, honoring the home of President George Washington, was adopted at the suggestion of Elizabeth Truss.

The congregation held a mass meeting on March 8, 1904 to plan for the building of a new brick building. A sum of $2,000 was raised on the spot and a building committee was formed. They chose a site two blocks away from the original church and more convenient to the North Birmingham Streetcar.

R. M. Johnson drew the plans for the new $6,000 building to seat 700 congregants along with 3 Sunday School rooms. A corner stone was laid at the site on June 26, 1904. The walls were laid of a light-colored "sandstone brick" manufactured by the Birmingham Lime & Cement Co.

Under the leadership of Reverend William Harris, Mt Vernon Methodist Church borrowed $60,000 to construct a new sanctuary and parsonage. Brodie & Sherman began preparing plans for the new buildings with a budget of $60,000 in 1927, but when B. Reedy began construction that August the budget had grown to $100,000. Harris left the congregation in 1930, but returned in 1934 and helped lead a campaign to retire the outstanding debts. The completed church building was dedicated on September 15, 1930.

A youth education building was completed in 1957 for $210,000, followed by a $150,000 Activities Building in 1963. During the next two decades, however, membership waned as many families moved out of Birmingham. On June 1, 1975 Mt Vernon voted to merge with Gardendale United Methodist Church, forming Gardendale Mt Vernon United Methodist Church. The pipe organ and most of the stained glass windows were removed to be used in a new building for the combined congregation.

The former church building was acquired by Faith, Hope, and Charity Ministries and served as the home of Faith College and the King Kids Academy in the early 1980s. Former Daniel Payne College president J. King Chandler III was shot to death by a man he was giving a ride to after leading a seminar at the building on November 10, 1981.

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