Next stop on the RHDC tour was the Gethsemane Seventh-Day Adventist Church. This is where I grabbed my favorite picture on the tour (above). The church is small but I really like the layout the main space with the two rooms on the side would make a cross if it were viewed from above. The block used for the exterior is simply yet oddly ornate with rocks in the otherwise plain concrete. The stained glass much like the outside is both simple and ornate at the same time. The combination of color and material creates a certain reverence when you walk in the door.
Dating to 1920, Gethsemane Seventh-Day Adventist is significant for two reasons:
One, it’s one of the first SDA churches in North Carolina built for a black congregation. In 1920, black Seventh-Day Adventists were still a rarity by comparison to other faiths. When the first such church started in Tennessee in the 1880s, estimates of total black membership in the nation came in at about 50. [SOURCE]
The church survives in a new location today having outgrown this building in the 1980s.
