Repurposing churches is all the rage these days. Whether they’re being turned into condos, or offices, or bars, the grand spaces and architectural details give the architects in charge a huge variety of options. In some cases, though, it seems as if the best idea would be to keep it as a church. Today’s subject, the church at the corner of 7th and A Streets NE, is just such a church.
Built by the Epworth Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1895, it served this congregation extremely well for the next 25 years. At the end of that time, it was getting too small for the swelling numbers coming to worship every week, and something needed to be done. Before any plans could be set into motion, however, fate intervened, in the form of a fire. On December 23, 1919, a fire raced through the church, gutting the interior.
Instead of rebuilding, the congregation raised the money to build a new church, a building that still stands at the corner of 13th Street and North Carolina Avenue, just off of Lincoln Park. It is the Lincoln Park Methodist church today.
Meanwhile, the old church walls stood unused for about a year, at which point a group by the name of the Church of the Nazarene offered to buy it. They had been meeting at 4th and East Capitol Street – coincidentally the same corner that the Epworth Church had started – and were looking for a larger space. The walls of the burned church were still solid, and it did not take long for the church to be restored to its former glory.
Once again, the space proved lucky. Over the next 30 years, the Church of the Nazarene – both the local congregation as well as the national church – grew explosively. In 1954, it was calculated that the national church had expanded by 653% since 1916. There was no doubt that new digs were necessary. After a couple false starts, the Nazarenes built a church at 16th and Webster Streets NW, which today is their national church.
The next tenant was a church variously known as the Cole Baptist Church or the Coles Memorial Baptist Church. They do not seem to have experienced the same success the previous two congregations had, and somewhere in the 80s seem to have quietly slipped off the stage.
Their successors, on the other hand, have done well for themselves. The Unity Church of Washington, which has been the most recent owner of the property, grew to the point where they needed the far larger premises formerly owned by the Metropolitan Baptist Church on R Street NW.
The big questions now are who will own the property next, what they will do with it, and will they be as successful as their predecessors.