St. Luke's Episcopal Church is a historic

Carpenter Gothic Carpenter Gothic, also sometimes called Carpenter's Gothic or Rural Gothic, is a North American architectural style-designation for an application of Gothic Revival architecture, Gothic Revival architectural detailing and picturesque massin ...

church, built during the 1850s at Cahaba, the first capital of

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

, United States, from 1820 to 1826. The unknown builder closely followed plans published by architect

Richard Upjohn Richard Upjohn (22 January 1802 – 16 August 1878) was a British-American architect who immigrated to the United States and became most famous for his Gothic Revival churches. He was partially responsible for launching the movement to popula ...

in his 1852 book ''Rural Architecture''.Gamble, Robert ''Historic architecture in Alabama: a guide to styles and types, 1810–1930'', page 83. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1990. . Exterior features of the

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or neo-Gothic) is an Architectural style, architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half ...

structure include

lancet window A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a sharp pointed arch at its top. This arch may or may not be a steep lancet arch (in which the compass centres for drawing the arch fall outside the opening). It acquired the "lancet" name from its rese ...

s, pointed arch doorways and vertical

board and batten A batten is most commonly a strip of solid material, historically wood but can also be of plastic, metal, or fiberglass. Battens are variously used in construction, sailing, and other fields. In the lighting industry, battens refer to linea ...

sheathing. The building originally had a square

bell tower A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell to ...

on the corner to the left of the current main front entrance, but this was not rebuilt when the church was relocated in 1878 to Martin's Station. The church was disassembled and relocated to Cahaba in 2007, where it was reassembled at Old Cahawba Archaeological Park.

History

St. Luke's was built in 1854, during Cahaba's antebellum boom years, on Vine Street near the intersection of Vine and 1st South Street. Following the post-war decline of Cahaba, the church was dismantled in 1878 and moved to the village of Martin's Station, where it was reassembled and continued to serve an

Episcopal Episcopal may refer to: *Of or relating to a bishop, an overseer in the Christian church *Episcopate, the see of a bishop – a diocese *Episcopal Church (disambiguation), any church with "Episcopal" in its name ** Episcopal Church (United States ...

congregation for several decades. It was later used by an

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

Baptist Baptists are a Christian denomination, denomination within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches ge ...

congregation for over 60 years before being acquired by the

Alabama Historical Commission The Alabama Historical Commission is the historic preservation agency for the U.S. state of Alabama. The agency was created by an act of the state legislature in 1966 with a mission of safeguarding Alabama's historic buildings and sites. It consi ...

. It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on March 25, 1982. During the academic year 2006–2007, students from

Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 26,800 undergraduate students, over 6,100 post-graduate students, and a tota ...

's Rural Project carefully dismantled the church building so that it could be moved back to Cahaba and reassembled at Old Cahawba Archaeological Park. From 2007 to 2008 the students reassembled the building at Cahaba, near the corner of Beech Street and Capitol Street, across from the Old Cahawba Archaeological Park visitor center. This third site was chosen because the original one on Vine Street was found to be located in a

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river. Floodplains stretch from the banks of a river channel to the base of the enclosing valley, and experience flooding during periods of high Discharge (hydrolog ...

. Most of the exterior work was completed by late 2009.

References

External links

Old Cahawba: "Alabama's most famous Ghost Town"
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Luke's Episcopal Church, Cahaba, Alabama National Register of Historic Places in Dallas County, Alabama Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama Episcopal church buildings in Alabama Carpenter Gothic church buildings in Alabama Churches completed in 1854 19th-century Episcopal church buildings Relocated buildings and structures in Alabama Historic American Buildings Survey in Alabama

History

See also

References

External links