Birmingham Churches and their Cornerstones 95

Long tall nave with side aisles and towering campanile: it was the recipie for success in the Italian Renaissance and in the Early Christian Revival in early twentieth century America. In my personal experience of living in Massachusetts, I think first of St. Paul’s Catholic Church in Harvard Square and then St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in North Cambridge (Speaker Tip O’Neal was buried from the later). Further afield, I also think of St. Ignatius of Antioch in Cleveland, Ohio.

In Birmingham, Alabama, we have two great examples of this style. One is Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in West End (which doesn’t have a cornerstone and so has not yet appeared in this series). The other is East Lake United Methodist Church. It was designed by local architect George P. Turner who lived across the street from the church.

There are many aspects of East Lake’s buidling that are worth attention. My student, Davis Domesick, wrote about the windows in its chapel in this 2020 post. The bell tower looked down on the former campus of Samford Univerity (then Howard College). The church has continued to minister to its community in a great many ways. There were once many churches in East Lake founded by Whites. Today the only two that remain are East Lake United Methodist and St. Barnabas Roman Catholic. The others have either moved away, like Faith Lutheran Church; or closed, like Ruhama Baptist and sold their buildings to majority African American congregations. East Lake UMC proudly uses the tag line on its website “in the neighborhood for good.”

Since it is a Methodist church, the carved stone work on the exterior is particularly remarkable. Above the front door is a mother and child.

Seemingly folksy carvings of griffin and angels guard the doors.

And the columns by the doors feature faces of choir boys (Schnorrenberg and Ford-Freeman 1999, 12).

For more information on the church’s history, see its history on its website and 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 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.

References

Schnorrenberg, John M., and Janice Ford-Freeman. 1999. Walking tours of Birmingham churches conducted from 1990 to 1999. Birmingham, AL: University of Alabama at Birmingham, Dept. of Art and Art History.