Birmingham Churches and their Cornerstones 88

This stately stone Gothic revival auditorium church sits at 6th Avenue North and 25th Street oppostie Marconi Park and the Jones Valley Teaching Farm. It was erected as the home of Birmingham’s “northern” Methodist church, Simpson Methodist Episcopal Church in 1926. Birmingham architect William Welton designed the church.

A bit more than a decade later, the Methodist Episcopal Church reunited with two denominations that split off from it a century earlier, the Methodist Protestant Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Since First Methodist was a thriving White church of the newly reunited denomination just six blocks to the west, and since residents were leaving Downtown Birmingham for new suburbs, Simpson closed.

The buidling was sold and became the home of Central Church of Christ, a new congregation created by members of the church of Christ to serve the city. The building still has the cornerstone, inscribed on two sides, carrying the name of Central. Yet, in 1990, this congregation moved away from the building to unite with West End Church of Christ and create Pallisades Church of Christ in a new development in Shades Valley adjoining Homewood.

Since Central left the building, it has served not as a house of worship, but as a center for social service. It is now the home of the Metro Health Center of Alabama Regional Medical Services. For a bit more on the history of Simposon Methodist Episcopal Church, see its history 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.