First United Presbyterian Church
(ca. 1890s)
For more than a century, the First United Presbyterian Church has housed the successors of the original congregation members who hand-built the Gothic Revival edifice themselves.
201 E. 7th St., Charlotte, NC 28202
In 1866, the formerly enslaved Kathleen Hayes, who had previously worshipped at Charlotte’s First Presbyterian Church, challenged some 30 other Black members to “come down out of the gallery and worship God on the main floor.” After the Civil War, missionaries from the Northern Presbyterian Church – like Pittsburgh’s Reverend Samuel C. Alexander – traveled across the South to assist and evangelize the freedpeople. Alexander purchased land at the corner of Davidson and Third Streets in his name and transferred the parcel to Mrs. Hayes’ group, enabling them to establish the Colored Presbyterian Church of Charlotte. In 1873, the growing congregation purchased the property on the corner of East 7th and North College Streets, where the First United Presbyterian Church building has stood for more than 125 years, for $900. A loan of $800 from the Church Erection Fund of the Synod of Atlanta and Presbytery of Catawba enabled the congregation to build the current edifice, prompting a name change to the Seventh Street Presbyterian Church.
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The members of the congregation constructed the building themselves in the mid-1890s, working evenings and on weekends. Construction apparently began in 1894, supervised primarily by church member William Pethel who lived at 500 North Myers Street. To complete the structure, the church’s Board of Trustees secured a loan of $1,000 from the Church Erection Fund of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1896. The impressive structure remains one of Charlotte’s oldest examples of the Gothic Revival style of architecture.
Throughout its history the church has been an active participant in Charlotte’s Black community, including strong ties with Biddle Memorial Institute (now known as Johnson C. Smith University) during the school’s formative years. Indeed, the church counts among its former ministers Stephen Mattoon, President of Biddle Institute. The congregation merged with Brooklyn Presbyterian Church in 1968 to form the First United Presbyterian Church. The merged congregation still worships in the building once known as Seventh Street Presbyterian Church.