Guildfield Missionary Baptist Church is a historic

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

church on Guildfield Church Road in

South Guthrie, Tennessee South Guthrie is an unincorporated rural community in Montgomery County, Tennessee, immediately south of the Kentucky state line. Geography South Guthrie is adjacent to the city of Guthrie, Kentucky; essentially, it is the part of the Guthrie ...

. The congregation was started in 1868 with meetings at a home in South Guthrie. It was formally organized in 1869 and affiliated with the Consolidated American Missionary Baptist Convention, a forerunner to the National Baptist Convention. Land for a church was acquired in 1871. The congregation completed a new

frame A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent. Frame and FRAME may also refer to: Physical objects In building construction *Framing (con ...

church building before 1882. It was replaced at the same location by a second frame building in the 1880s and a third frame church in the 1890s. The church building was completed in 1922, replacing the building at the same location that had been built in the 1890s. Church deacon Edward Warfield raised much of the money for construction of the new church. In the same year, Warfield also led a successful community fund-raising effort for building of a new Rosenwald school to replace a black school in South Guthrie that was destroyed by a

tornado A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone, altho ...

. The $500 raised in the local African American community was combined with $300 from the

Rosenwald Fund The Rosenwald Fund (also known as the Rosenwald Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and the Julius Rosenwald Foundation) was established in 1917 by Julius Rosenwald and his family for "the well-being of mankind." Rosenwald became part-owner of S ...

and $700 from government sources to pay for construction of a two-teacher Rosenwald school, also completed in 1922. The school, which came to be known as the Warfield School, currently houses a community center. The church is a two-story

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

building on a

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wi ...

foundation with a

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

-front entrance. Romanesque Revival elements are prominent in its design. There are two large Romanesque arched colored glass windows in the center of its eastern facade, flanked on either side by brick towers with double doorways in the shape of Romanesque arches. Brick

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (s ...

es with triangular white

capstone CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) is a lunar orbiter that will test and verify the calculated orbital stability planned for the Lunar Gateway space station. The spacecraft is a 12- ...

s are on the north and south corners of the towers and on the building's long north and side walls. The church's red brick walls have been painted red since 1980. The building was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2003. Its size and architecture are unusual for an African-American church of its era. In the National Register nomination, historian Carroll Van West wrote that no other extant rural African-American church in

Middle Tennessee Middle Tennessee is one of the three Grand Divisions of the U.S. state of Tennessee that composes roughly the central portion of the state. It is delineated according to state law as 41 of the state's 95 counties. Middle Tennessee contains the s ...

"match dthe size, the brick masonry, and architectural distinctiveness of this building."

References

Baptist churches in Tennessee Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Tennessee Churches completed in 1922 20th-century Baptist churches in the United States Churches in Montgomery County, Tennessee National Register of Historic Places in Montgomery County, Tennessee {{Tennessee-church-stub