First Presbyterian Church
First Presbyterian Church, located at 2100 4th Avenue North, is Birmingham's oldest Presbyterian congregation.
Founded in 1858 as the Old School Presbyterian Church of Elyton, the church began offering services in a small building on the northeast corner of Square Street and Morris Avenue in Elyton. When the Elyton Land Company announced that it would grant churches of any denomination free lots downtown Birmingham, the Presbyterians were the first to select a lot. Using wagons, they moved their building to the northeast corner of 4th Avenue North and 21st Street around 1872.
The church's present brick building was constructed in 1888 to accommodate their growing congregation, and is known as the "Mother Church" of Presbyterians in Birmingham, because it helped to establish other churches in the area. Several changes occurred to the building afterwards. The first was moving the front entrance to 4th Avenue as 21st Street was widened. The Rushton Memorial Carillon was installed in the bell tower in 1924, one of only three in the United States at the time. It housed 25 bells weighing 8 tons. The church was remodeled in 1950 to include a new pipe organ and the Phillips Chapel installed as a memorial to Dr. John Herbert Phillips and his wife. In 1957, architects D. H. Greer and W. N. Chambers designed the addition to the education building.
References
- Satterfield, Carolyn Green (1976) Historic Sites of Jefferson County, Alabama. Birmingham: Jefferson County Historical Commission/Gray Printing Company