First Presbyterian Church (1917)
-
-
Now turn down West Main and continue until you reach the First Presbyterian Church at 114 West Main Street. The building you see today was finished on September 16, 1917, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
The First Presbyterian Church is the third church building erected in Lincolnton by a congregation which dates to 1815. Organized as Emanuel's Presbyterian Church, the congregation was the third to be established in a community which then, in 1815, had only Lutheran and Reformed churches. From 1815 until 1839, the church held services in the union church built by the Lutheran and Reformed congregations. In 1839, the congregation completed its first church on Water Street and renamed itself the Lincolnton Presbyterian Church. During the second half of the nineteenth century the fortunes of the Lincolnton Presbyterian Church rose during the long-term ministries of the Reverend Robert Newton Davis and the Reverend Robert Zenas Johnston. In the late 1880s the church determined to build a new sanctuary and in May 1890 its trustees acquired a portion of the former Phifer estate, a lot at the corner of West Main and Government Streets. Here they built a fashionable Gothic Revival style church in 1891-1892. In 1916, the Lincolnton Presbyterian Church determined to build a new building on the site of their second church. The impressive Late Gothic Revival style church has a pair of twin towers flanking the gable-front facade. The well-finished and well-preserved church impressively represents one of several modes in which the Late Gothic Revival style was rendered across North Carolina in the opening decades of the twentieth century.
View:
