Area less than one acre NRHP Reference # 79000720 Architectural style Renaissance architecture Function Church | Built 1908 (1908) Opened 1908 Phone +1 404-659-6255 Added to NRHP 19 January 1979 | |
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Location 105 Courtland St., NE, Atlanta, Georgia Address 125 Ellis St NE, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA Similar Big Bethel AME Church, Peachtree Center, Herndon Home, Red Light Cafe, Church of the Sacred Heart of J Profiles | ||
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.
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, 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.