Church Street United Methodist Church

Church Street United Methodist Church is a United Methodist church located on Henley Street in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. The church building is considered a Knoxville landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.History and architectureThe Church Street Methodist congregation formed in 1816. Initially, it met in a building on Hill Avenue in downtown Knoxville. In 1836 the congregation moved into a new building on Church Street between Walnut and Market Streets, where it met until the Civil War. Around 1870, the congregation relocated to a brick building one block east of its former location on Church Street, and in the late 1870s it built a new Gothic Revival style church, designed by Knoxville architect Alexander Campbell Bruce. Planning to replace that church building began in 1921 when the congregation recognized a need for a larger facility to accommodate its growth, but little progress had been made as of February 1928, when a fire destroyed the building on Church Street. The congregation then acquired the Henley Street site to construct a new, larger church building. In the move to Henley Street, the church retained its old name of Church Street Methodist Episcopal Church, South. (In 1939, it became Church Street Methodist Church.)The congregation decided to retain the Gothic Revival architectural style for its new building. Architect John Russell Pope of New York City was hired to design the new facility, in cooperation with local architect Charles I. Barber of the Knoxville firm of Barber & McMurry. The design was similar to several other Gothic Revival buildings that Pope’s firm had designed, including buildings on the Yale University campus and churches in Larchmont and New Rochelle, New York, and Columbus, Ohio. Construction of the new building began in March 1930 and was completed the following year, with the first worship service held in January 1931.