First Congregational Church (Atlanta)

First Congregational Church
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location	105 Courtland St., NE, Atlanta, Georgia
Coordinates	33°45′27″N 84°23′1″W / 33.75750°N 84.38361°WCoordinates: 33°45′27″N 84°23′1″W / 33.75750°N 84.38361°W
Area	less than one acre
Built	1908
Architectural style	Renaissance
NRHP Reference #	79000720[1]
Added to NRHP	January 19, 1979

First Congregational Church (First Church; United Church of Christ) is a United Church of Christ church located in downtown Atlanta at the corner of Courtland Street and John Wesley Dobbs Avenue (formerly Houston Street). It is notable for being the favored church of the city's black elite including Alonzo Herndon and Andrew Young, for its famous minister Henry H. Proctor, and for President Taft having visited in 1898.^[2]

The church is the second-oldest African-American Congregational Church in the United States. The American Missionary Association (AMA) established the Storrs School in Atlanta. The school served as a center for social services, education, and worship for newly freed blacks. Worshipers at the school's services petitioned for a church of their own. As a result, in May 1867 a Congregational Church was organized,^[3] and the AMA donated the land.

The church was never formally segregated but had become mostly black by 1892. The current building is the second church, built on the site of the original one in 1908.^[4]

External links

• church website
• historic photo at Atlanta History Center website

References

1. Staff (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
2. Lawrence Otis Graham, Our Kind of People: inside America's Black upper class, p. 344
3. "First Congregational Church, U.C.C., Atlanta, Georgia records", Auburn Avenue Research Library site
4. "First Congregational Church", Atlanta History Center website