Birmingham Churches and Their Cornerstones 78

Tabernacle Baptist Church was founded in 1886 and was once located in Birmingham’s northside, but like many African American churches and homes, it was displaced by the contruction of an Internstate. Its former location, 1013 25th Street North is right in the middle of the junction of Interstate 20/59 with US Route 31.

In 1968, Tabernacle relocated to this new building at 600 Center Street North on Birmingham’s west side near Legion Field. The historic church, where Martin Luther King, Jr., had spoken as early as 1955 was raised. The tall white arches of its porch, while in a Romanesque idiom, remind me of the so-called “Space Gothic” style of the early 1960s. It was manifested in some of the buildings for the 1962 world’s fair in Seattle (the Century 21 Exposition).

The simplicity of Tabernacle’s cornerstone is stricking given that so many African American Baptist churches in Birmingham list many names on the stone.

For more information on the church’s history, see its entry on Bhamwiki. Read this first post for more on this series on Birmingham churches and their cornerstones.

Map of Posts in this Project

Each site in this project is mapped below. Clicking on an icon will bring up a box with a link to the post on the site. Please use it to browse the collection.

The color and shape of the location markers indicate the character of the cornerstones at each site. Stones like this, with only the church name and date, are light blue. Ones with multiple names are red. If there is more than one stone at the site a shape is used. Click here for full information on the icons.