Lost Churches

More time travel through the collections of the Kellenberger Room

First Baptist Church, northwest corner of Johnson and Metcalf streets, photographed c.1900. Built c. 1811-12 with the tower  added c. 1833, the building was replaced by the Baptists with a new church in a different location in 1848. The old church became the home of the African American St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church following the Civil War.  They replaced this building with a new church on the same site in 1910.

by John B. Green III

Continuing our time travel for the self-isolated and socially distanced, we examine photos of New Bern churches lost to time.  Either accidentally burned or in some cases demolished as the needs or tastes of their congregations changed, these fascinating buildings would be prized additions to our town today.

Tabernacle Baptist Church, northeast corner Broad and George streets, photo c. 1900. Designed by New Bern architect Herbert Woodley Simpson and completed in 1897, Tabernacle Baptist Church was enlarged in 1913 and unfortunately destroyed by fire on the evening of November 30, 1931. The congregation erected a brick building on the same site in 1943.

Centenary Methodist Church, 500 block New Street, south side, photographed c. 1901. Probably designed and erected by New Bern builder Hardy B. Lane, the church was completed by 1843. Originally designed in the Greek Revival style with a square tower topped by four corner spires, the structure was extensively remodeled in 1884 by architect J. Crawford Neilson and builder A.M. Carroll, both from Baltimore. The church was replaced by a new facility two blocks east in 1905.  The 1843 building was sold and served as a furniture warehouse until it was demolished in 1939.

Christian Church, 300 block Hancock Street, west side, photo c. 1914. Built between 1887 and 1889, the Christian Church was described at its dedication as:  The new church is a neat, attractive building.  It is 60 x 34 feet in size; the top of the steeple is 108 feet from the ground; the pitch of the ceiling is 21 feet; the walls, inside, are imitation stone; the ceiling overhead is of native woods, beautifully painted and finished with gilded trimmings; stained-glass windows; gallery in front end; very comfortable pews; handsome pulpit furniture; the room is heated by one of Mott's furnaces; well lighted at night by gas, one of I.P. Frinks' silvered corrugated glass reflectors being used, besides a gas-light on each side of the pulpit and two in the gallery.  The church was destroyed by fire on the evening of December 30, 1918 and replaced in 1926 at a new site on Broad Street.

The Church That Might Have Been

Design for a chapel, 1834, from Edward T. Davis and John L. Sanders,
A Romantic Architect in Antebellum North Carolina:
The Works of Alexander Jackson Davis

By John B. Green III


Judge William Gaston, lawyer, congressman, and state supreme court justice, was one of the founders and patrons of New Bern's fledgling Roman Catholic congregation in the early 19th Century.  The congregation met in private homes but Gaston soon sought to secure a permanent place of worship.  Through his son-in-law Robert Donaldson of New York, Gaston had become acquainted with the nationally-known architect Alexander Jackson Davis.  Davis was an energetic proponent of the various romantic-revival architectural styles then becoming popular.  Between 1834 and 1840 Davis supplied Gaston with at least two sets of plans and renderings for a Roman Catholic chapel in the Gothic style.  Buttressed and spired, with tracery windows, the chapel would be the purest expression of the Gothic-Revival style in New Bern and North Carolina and a dignified home for the town's Catholics.  But it was not to be.  Architectural exuberance and religious fervor soon ran head-long into a practical bishop with an eye on the bottom line.

Design for a chapel, 1840, from Mills Lane, Architecture in the Old South: North Carolina

The Right Reverend John England, Bishop of Charleston, had organised the parish of St. Paul in New Bern in 1824.  He had worked closely with William Gaston to promote the local congregation and to secure a place of worship.  But he balked at the cost and complexity of the proposed Gothic chapel.  Counseling Gaston to build a church at a cost and in a style which could easily be erected in New Bern, the Bishop supplied a sketch plan of a plain frame church.  With the plan in the hands of New Bern builder Hardy B. Lane, the result was the St. Paul's Catholic Church on Middle Street familiar to generations of New Bernians.  Completed in 1841, the wood-frame church combined late-Federal and Greek-Revival details.  Although significantly altered in appearance by the 1896 addition of an entrance tower, the church is still recognizable as the building which Bishop England approved.

St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church, photo ca. 1862. U.S. Army Military History Institute

Although his grand Gothic chapel would never be constructed, Alexander Jackson Davis did leave one tangible reminder of his connection to William Gaston and New Bern.  Upon Gaston's death in 1844, his family asked Davis to design a suitable monument for his grave. The resulting classically styled sarcophagus, executed in Italian marble, marks Gaston's final resting place in Cedar Grove Cemetery to this day.

Grave of William Gaston, Cedar Grove Cemetery, New Bern, photo ca. 1910, from Mary Louise Waters, A Short Historical Sketch of New Bern, N.C.