Birmingham Churches and Their Cornerstones 75
I’m including this building in this series even though it has no cornerstone and hasn’t been a church in over a half century. The building was erected in 1921 as the home of Good Shepherd, an Episcopal mission in the East Lake neighborhood of Birmingham. The building is at 217 77th Street North, or, as it is now addressed, 217 Oporto-Madrid Boulevard North. It is just south-east of Interstate 59. I took the picture below in May 2005. I was struck by its Carpenter Gothic details, but it would be over a decade before I bothered to figure out who had built the building.
I don’t know when for sure the mission was closed. Records online suggest it remained active into at least the 1940s and city directories list the address as the church into at least the 1940s. If students from Howard College (now Samford University) wanted to walk to an Episcopal church, this is where they would have gone. In 1921 the Howard Crimson reported that “Miss Elizabeth Howlett, Mrs. H. B. Whiteside and Miss Marjorie Bass, of East Lake” would be among those in the comedy Queen of Hearts offered in the college chapel “under the auspices of the Good Shepherd (Episcopal) Mission” (November 18, 1921, p. 7).
In Bishops, Bourbons, and Big Mules (2013), Barry Vaughn indicates that this was one of three churches in eastern Birmingham that the Reverend Carl Henckell served. The other two were Christ in Avondale and Grace in Woodlawn. Grace alone survives. It was located between the other other two. Perhaps the Good Shepherd mission in East Lake closed or faded by the time Saint Michael’s Episcopal Church in Huffman opened in 1955, but city directories continue to list the address as Good Shepherd until at least 1965.
As the faded print at the bottom of the Pepsi sign above the building suggests, the building had most recently been an antique store, “Antique Mall East” according to city directories, from 1990 and 2000. Its first usage after it closed as a church appears to have been as a pre-school. The city’s tax map indicated that the property has not changed hands since I took the above photo in 2005. Though it may have been rented as a church for a while. It has fallen into disrepair as the more recent photos below witness.
Read this first post for more on this series on Birmingham churches and their cornerstones.
Chasing Churches 
I grew up a member of the Good Shepherd,1952-1966..It closed and I remember the antique shop..I’ve heard its another church now,Life-changing worshiping center..Don’t know if the building is still there or not..
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Thank you so much for your comment!! It is terrific to connect with someone who was a member there.
I was by the site a few weeks ago and saw that the Good Shepherd building had been taken down. It is no more. Life Changing Worship Center is still meeting nextdoor, across the alley to the south.
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