Houses of Worship: Downtown Raleigh’s Historic Churches

As North Carolina’s capitol was founded, churches were built around its central square. Eight of them are still part of this bustling city
by Lori D. R. Wiggins | photography by Bryan Regan

In its earliest days, Raleigh’s spiritual footprint grew along the square that housed the North Carolina State House (the precursor to today’s Capitol Building). On each corner, churches began as spaces of simple design and convenient location, but the changes brought by growth and catastrophe dictated new structures over generations of congregations.

Today, these downtown churches are nestled between office buildings and apartments and offer an eclectic mix of English Gothic, Romanesque, late Gothic Revival and traditional religious architecture. Some of them have stood for over 200 years.

“When you consider what downtown has become, with all the huge office buildings and government buildings, it is amazing we continue to survive and have Sunday services and community ministries,” says Margaret Park, a lifelong member of the Church of the Good Shepherd.

First Presbyterian Church, at the corner of Salisbury and Morgan Streets, is the city’s oldest. Organized in 1816, the congregation met in the State House for two years until its church was completed in 1818, facing Union Square. The other three corners soon became home to First Baptist Church at Wilmington and Morgan Streets, Christ Church at the corner of Edenton and Wilmington Streets, and First Baptist Church – Salisbury at Edenton and Salisbury Streets. Soon, they were joined by the Church of the Good Shepherd at Salisbury and Hillsborough Streets; St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church at Edenton and West Streets; and Sacred Heart Cathedral on Hillsborough Street between N. Dawson and N. McDowell Streets.

“I’ve experienced every church,” says Carolyn Dickens, a native of Laurinburg, North Carolina, who became a member of First Baptist Church – Salisbury in 1977 at the encouragement of a cousin. At the time Dickens, a great granddaughter of Needham B. Broughton, had no idea that her family had been attending this church as far back as the 1800s. “Raleigh was nothing until it became the capital, and churches sprung from it,” says Dickens. “The churches have deep roots.”

Read on for a tour of these historical downtown churches.

Church of the Good Shepherd

The Church of the Good Shepherd opened in 1874 as Raleigh’s first Episcopal church with free pews. (This was a departure from the other Episcopal church, where pews were owned by various families in the congregation and rented to others.) The present church replaced the original, wood-framed building in 1914. It features a marble cornerstone quarried near Jerusalem and laid in 1899, as well as stained-glass windows installed over a span of 60 years. Its altar depicts the Last Supper with wainscoting and paving inside an altar rail made from Italian marble typical of churches in Northern Italy and installed by masons from Italy. In 2006, to make room for a new parish life center and the Shepherd’s Table Soup Kitchen, which serves free, hot meals every weekday, the All Saints Chapel portion of the church was disassembled and transported in sections about a half mile over to East Street, where it was reassembled and restored and remains today as an event venue.

First Baptist Church – Wilmington Street

First Baptist Church started in 1812 at the corner of Wilmington and Morgan Streets as a biracial congregation of 14 enslaved persons of African descent and nine freedmen of European descent. The church worshipped in temporary locations, including its first church, a wood-frame building on Person Street, and at the current Gothic Revival church building on Wilmington, which was also used by other congregations at the time. In 1868, Black congregants of the church peacefully requested — and were granted — permission to be dismissed from the integrated church. The two congregations remained one until another church was built on Salisbury Street. First Baptist Church – Wilmington became the permanent home to Black congregants, and white congregants headed to its sister church diagonally across Union Square.

First Presbyterian Church

First Presbyterian Church congregants began to meet inside the State House in 1816, at a time of heightened political, economic and social polarization rooted in antebellum politics. A Colonial-style brick meeting house was constructed two years later on the southwest corner of Salisbury and Morgan Streets. In 1831, when fire destroyed the original State Capitol building, the state Supreme Court met in session at First Presbyterian until the present Capitol building was completed in 1840. After 80 years in the original structure, the present sanctuary was erected in 1898 in a Romanesque Revival style. It was extensively remodeled in 1956 to its present style and expanded again in 2012. Throughout, the 1900 original building fabric was recovered and used, and three terra-cotta and brick arches were restored. It also houses old stained-glass windows and a pipe organ. The windows include several designed by New Jersey-based Payne Studios in 1928 in the style of 13th- and 14th-century European windows, depicting the scenes from Christ’s life. There are also two windows in the sanctuary that were commissioned in 1893; these are done in Art Nouveau-style Tiffany glass.

Edenton Street United Methodist Church

In 1811, the State House in Raleigh’s city center hosted the Methodist annual conference. Following that conference, Edenton Street United Methodist Church was erected in the same place it stands now, at the corner of Edenton and Dawson streets. The first church building was constructed of hewn logs. One of the first churches built in Raleigh, Edenton Street United Methodist Church has occupied four different buildings. Two of them were destroyed by fire. Each time, the church was rebuilt with new bricks and mortar in the same location. Its third church construction, completed in 1887, featured a 183-foot-tall central tower, which, at the time, was the tallest spire in the city. That building was destroyed by a fire in 1956, when lightning struck the steeple. The current red-brick Neo-Gothic structure was completed in 1958. It has a lightning rod atop the cross of its towering church steeple.

First Baptist Church, Salisbury Street

The original First Baptist Church (above and below) in Raleigh was founded in 1812 with a biracial congregation. In 1868, the congregation split into two churches, one predominantly white, the other predominantly Black, after a delegation of descendants of the enslaved founders expressed appreciation, then requested dismissal. A new church was built for white congregants, and in September 1859, the church held its first service in the current building on Salisbury Street.

Sacred Heart Church

The Catholic community bought the site for Sacred Heart Cathedral (above) in 1879, and construction began more than 40 years later in 1922. At its completion in 1924, it was the smallest cathedral in the country (a cathedral denotes that the church is the administrative center for the region). The building was constructed with gray granite blocks laid by the same Irish stonemasons who worked on the Capitol building. In 2017, the Catholic church of North Carolina opened Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral off of Western Boulevard to serve its growing parish, but Sacred Heart Church continues to conduct daily Mass and confessions, as well as host small weddings and funerals.

Christ Church

Christ Church (above) the oldest Episcopal congregation in the Raleigh area and the largest in the state diocese, was organized with 35 members in 1821. Thanks to a bequest, the church bought the lot it sits on today in 1829 and erected a simple frame structure. The current structure, designed in 1846 and consecrated in 1854, is one of the first Gothic Revival churches in the South. It features rough-cut stone varied in color and a red-tiled roof. A large education wing was added to the church in 1970. Considered the “mother” parish of Wake County’s Episcopal churches, Christ Church has been designated a National Historic Landmark and placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

St. Paul A.M.E. Church

The congregation of St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church was originally made up of the enslaved Black membership of Edenton Street United Methodist Church. In need of more space, in 1846 they had begun to worship at the Old Christ Episcopal Church at the corner of E. Edenton and S. Wilmington Streets. Two years later, they established St. Paul Church. In 1853, white Methodists bought the Old Christ building, so the following year Black members moved to a wood-framed church at the corner of Harrington and Edenton Streets, where the congregation remains today. At the time, Black congregants in the South were under the spiritual guidance of white Methodists. Soon after Emancipation, in 1865, the St. Paul’s congregation severed ties with the white Methodists and joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church. An example of high Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, Black masons began the construction of the red-brick structure in 1884 and completed it in 1901. An addition to the church was completed in 1999. It is Wake County’s oldest Black church.