Davidson Baptist Chapel
(ca. 1960)
The Davidson Baptist Chapel represents a mid-twentieth century effort to establish a Baptist presence in the predominantly Presbyterian town of Davidson.
307 Armour St, Davidson, NC 28036
The Davidson Baptist Chapel served as the Baptist mission, and later church, for the white residents of Davidson during and after segregation. Located on the western side of town – home to Davidson’s cotton mills, associated mill village, and growing manufacturing industries – the chapel stood in contrast to the locally dominant Presbyterian church, its upper- and middle-class congregants, and the associated Davidson College. As such, the Davidson Baptist Chapel is a significant extant representation of the physical (due in large part to the Norfolk Southern railroad that bisected the town) and socioeconomic class divide that once characterized the town.
Property Quick Links
Until the opening of the Linden and Delburg cotton mills around the turn of the twentieth century, white residents of Davidson lived adjacent to each other, regardless of class and occupation. But as the mill villages took shape, social divisions increased. Recreation programs and schools were separate, as the town did not have a public school until 1911. Although Davidson College expanded its water and sewer lines to serve Main Street and nearby residences in the early 1900s, such utility services remained unavailable for the mill villages and Mock Hill until much later. Mill houses were connected to the electric grid starting in 1931. Davidson’s white churches also tended to reflect the social and economic standing of its congregants, with upper-class and college-affiliated residents at the Presbyterian church, merchants and business owners at the Methodist church, middle class at the Episcopal church, and working class at the west Davidson churches.
In the post-World War II years, as the Baptist faith grew along with the general population of Mecklenburg County, the Mecklenburg Baptist Association (MBA) initiated missions in underserved communities with the hope that they would become fully organized churches. Davidson, a longtime Presbyterian stronghold, was a natural candidate for those efforts. A fledgling Baptist congregation was sponsored in Davidson during the 1950s by existing Baptist churches in Cornelius and Huntersville, prompting the MBA to construct the chapel in the late 1950s as a mission church. The congregation thrived, such that the MBA recognized it as a church in 1970, renaming it the First Baptist Church of Davidson. Like other small churches between the 1980s and early 2000s, however, the church struggled as attendance and religious affiliations declined. First Baptist closed its doors in the early 2000s.
Generally self-contained, western Davidson remained working class well into the twentieth century. With the 1960s construction of Lake Norman that flooded the portion of Mecklenburg County west of Davidson, increased development and adaptive reuse of the mill properties from the 1980s onward have resulted in the loss of many of those buildings, making the former chapel an important artifact of the town’s history. After changing hands several times, the building was acquired in 2008 as a home for the Davidson Community Players (DCP) through the collaborative efforts of DCP and the Town of Davidson. Renamed the Armour Street Theatre, DCP and its facility are widely regarded regionally for both theatrical productions and theatre education.