Some Restoration Movement sites in downtown Nashville

At some point somewhere I talked about Restoration Movement sites in downtown Nashville, and how close they are.  At the risk of trivializing the geography (Alexander Campbell slept here!) it is worth noting that one cannot move around too much downtown without walking across some site where something fairly significant happened.

Metro Archives posted this photo from 1965 to their Facebook page some years ago.  It provided the perfect canvas to sketch out for my audience what I needed to say.

Downtown Nashville, aerial view, 1965. From Metro Nashville Archives

I must have been talking about the Hebrew Mission, because why else would that location be emphasized?  The green highlights are on city streets in front of locations of interest.  That is by design since Nashville natives know their city by street names, and that was one of my ‘hooks’ to draw in my audience.  Also, since most of the landmarks are now obliterated, the streets are all that remain (and some of them have been renamed).  This photo is also a good backdrop because 1) of the recognizable L&C Tower, and  2) it is so different from the skyline we now know (or have to endure).  Point being it grabbed attention and let me sketch out the historical geography of some of the important places that figured prominently in my talk.

Downtown Nashville, aerial view, 1965. From Metro Nashville Archives

So, start at the upper right corner, and we’ll go counter-clockwise:

*Foster Street Church, the Northeast Nashville outpost of the emerging suburban growth of Churches of Christ in the 1880s.  I think I mentioned this only to take advantage of the I-65 construction underway in this photo, and thereby make a point that the built environment has erased some of the important landmarks.  Even many locals 20 years ago had never heard of Foster Street Church.  Foster Street Church location is on the north margin of the on-ramp complex.

*Then go west over to Gay Street just north of the Capitol, site of the former Second Christian Church or Gay Street Christian Church, the major African-American congregation of Disciples and the first RM congregation in town to install an organ.  That building was a casualty of the Capitol Hill redevelopment program, mid 20th c.

*Then almost due south to Vine Street (later 7th Avenue, North), and we see a parking lot on the east side of the street, next to the tall hotel.  Site of the Vine Street Christian Church, built in 1889.

*Now a block or so south on 7th to the intersection at Broadway, to see the McQuiddy Printing Company building (still standing as the Barbershop Harmony Society headquarters).  This is where Gospel Advocate was edited and published for a generation, mid 20th. c.

*Now, turn the corner and at the back side of the Masonic Temple on the corner, within a stone’s throw of McQuiddy, is a four story red brick storefront with apartments above.  The Hebrew Mission occupied the ground floor of this building, ca. 1928-1932 or so.

*From there move northeast to Fifth Avenue, North, to see the Ryman Auditorium, and across the street from it the Central Church of Christ Girls Home (still standing in 1965, but would be razed in 1972).  Across Commerce to the north is Central Church Administration building and auditorium.

*Now hop up and over and across the alley to the Life and Casualty Insurance building.  The home office built before the tower is adjacent, red brick with a stone facade.  Both face 4th Avenue North just shy of Church Street.  Somewhere about where L&C complex sits was the Cherry Street Christian Church sat.  This was the grand building built for Jesse Babcock Ferguson in the late 1840s-early 1850s.  The old Church Street Christian Church sat about where the Public Library downtown branch sits, and it is not marked on this photo.

Time was you could drop me on just about any corner in Nashville, Tennessee, and not only could I find my way home, I could talk about RM sites along the way.  Given how much the built environment has changed in ten years, I don’t know if I would recognize it much at all.

 

Fourth Anniversary Birthday party for radio station WLAC, Nashville, 1930

On November 24th, 1930, Andrew Mizell Burton, J. T. Ward, Charles R. Brewer, and others donned tuxedos and evening gowns to celebrate the fourth anniversary of station W.L.A.C., or W-Life-and-Casualty, sometimes known as Station We Love All Campbellites.  This festive affair appears to have been held in the studio in the upper floor of the (old) Life and Casualty building on 4th Avenue, North.

Station manager Ward (who would purchase it from Burton a few years later) is seated on the middle row, far left.  To his left is A. M. Burton.  Directly behind him is Charles R. Brewer, minister at Central Church of Christ and one of the speakers for one of that congregations’ radio services.  It was Central’s pervasive use of  radio technology in the late 1920s, and Burton generosity with discounted air-time, that garnered the Campbellite riff off WLAC.  Ward is son of J. S. Ward, co-founder with David Lipscomb of the Nashville Bible School, Medical Director of Life and Casualty Insurance Company, and elder at Central Church.  I suppose the others are radio personalities and program staff.  I *think* that is Paul S. Hunton seated on the far right.  Were my files not packed up, I could probably dig out confirmation.  No one is named or identified on the back of the large (20″ x 30″ or so) photograph.  The cake with antennae modeled after the station’s broadcast towers on Murfreesboro Road is a clever touch.

WLAC 4th Anniversary, Columbia Broadcasting System, November 24, 1930

WLAC 4th Anniversary, Columbia Broadcasting System, November 24, 1930

WLAC 4th Anniversary, Columbia Broadcasting System, November 24, 1930

WLAC 4th Anniversary, Columbia Broadcasting System, November 24, 1930

WLAC 4th Anniversary, Columbia Broadcasting System, November 24, 1930

WLAC 4th Anniversary, Columbia Broadcasting System, November 24, 1930

Christmas at Central Church of Christ, Nashville, Tennessee, ca. 1945

Sometime in the 1940s, someone at Central Church of Christ photographed their annual Christmas display with gifts for children.  These gifts were ready for distribution through their benevolence office, at that time open seven days per week, about 12 or more hours per day.  The first photo is in the fellowship hall on the main level, looking toward the front of the building.  Fifth Avenue, North, is outside the windows in the background.  The second photo is downstairs in the basement facing the window which then looked out into the enclosed courtyard between the administration building and the auditorium.  That space was fashioned into an outdoor play area for children enrolled in the day nursery or Day Home.  In the 1920s Central Church perceived a need single mothers had for day care, and so the day Home operated for about fifty years until state regulations erased its feasibility.  Presumably the children pictured here are the children in the program at that time.

Christmas display, Central Church of Christ, Nashville, Tennessee, ca. 1945

Christmas display with children at the Day Home, Central Church of Christ, Nashville, Tennessee, ca. 1945

Memories: Photographs and Stories from the Restoration Movement…2023 Pepperdine Bible Lectures presentation

Jerry Rushford, John Mark Hicks and Mac Ice present Memories: Photographs and Stories from the Restoration Movement.  Here is the slide presentation and here is the audio recording.

Preach the Word: James A. Allen at the Church Street pulpit

In about 1905 or so James A. Allen stood behind the pulpit from the old Baptist Church of Nashville (later the Church Street Christian Church) likely in the yard of his aunt’s home and this photograph was taken.

I wrote about this pulpit a few years ago, and included the photograph with the article.  I recently ran across this colorized version and thought it worth sharing.  A few years ago MyHeritage ran a special trial for a while wherein you could upload a few photos and run them through their colorization process.  It was a clever gimmick to gain subscribers.  In my case it worked.  I signed up a for the trial subscription and used the database.  I ran some family photos through the system, including the animation feature, and was just amazed.  I realize some have strong feelings about altering a historical record in this way, and I share the same concerns if the alteration is not noted.  So, consider it noted.

If I were to assemble the most iconic images relating to Nashville Churches of Christ and Restoration Movement history, this image would certainly make the short list.  What a fabulous image:

James A. Allen at the Church Street pulpit, ca. 1905. Colorized.

Name Authority for Nashville, Tennessee Stone-Campbell Congregations, 5th edition, now available

Name Authority for Nashville Tennessee Stone-Campbell Congregations, 5th edition, revised and enlarged. April 18, 2020.  This list comprises 440 variations of time, place and character names for 247 known congregations of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee from 1812 to March 2020.

Vacation Bible School. Eastview Church of Christ, Nashville, Tennessee, early 1950s

Nashville, The City of David (Lipscomb): Three issues of Gospel Advocate remember Lipscomb and his legacy

The December 6, 1917 issue of Gospel Advocate was devoted to the memory of the recently-deceased David Lipscomb.  It is a rich treasure of memories and tributes. To my knowledge this issue was the first to carry Lipscomb’s photograph on the cover. Similar covers followed in 1931 (the July 11 Davidson County Special Number) and 1939 (the December 7 special issue about the history of the Nashville congregations).

These three issues are of significant historical value. As primary sources they provide information unavailable elsewhere. As interpretive reflections they are a beginning point for how Lipscomb was remembered and how congregational history was recorded and carried forward. The 1917 issue, other than newspaper obituaries and Price Billingsley’s diary, is the first secondary source about the life and impact of David Lipscomb. The Billingsley diary (housed at Center for Restoration Studies, Abilene Christian University) contains a description of the funeral along with its author’s candid thoughts and impressions. It was not intended, at the time, for public reading.

The issue of the Advocate, however, is a product of the McQuiddy Printing Company and is most certainly intended to capture the mood and ethos in the air just after Lipscomb’s death and by way of the mails deliver it to subscribers wherever they may be. In point of time, it is the first published sustained historical reflection on Lipscomb’s life and ministry. The 1931 and 1939 special issues focus on Lipscomb’s activity on the ground among the citizens of Nashville’s neighborhoods. Here his legacy is as a church planter: an indefatigable, patient, faithful steward. He plants, he teaches, he preaches, he organizes. He observes shifting residential patterns and responds with congregational leadership development. To meet the needs of the emerging streetcar suburbs, he urges elders to take charge of teaching responsibilities, engage evangelists and establish congregations through peaceful migrations and church plants. The 1931 and 1939 issues are testimonies to the effects of this approach. Along the way they preserve details and photographic evidence that is simply unavailable elsewhere.

All three are available for download below.

Click here to download the December 6, 1917 David Lipscomb Memorial Number.

Click here to download the historical sections from the July 11, 1931 special issue about the history of the Nashville Churches of Christ

Click here to download the December 7, 1939 special issue about the history of the Nashville Churches of Christ.

Leander Moore preaches at Central Church of Christ (Deaf), 1960s

Several years ago I was given a few photographs and other paper items from the estate of Owen Pryor, one of the early ministers to the deaf at Nashville’s Central Church of Christ.  Among them is this photograph of Leander Moore preaching to the deaf congregation.  It is as fine an example of chart preaching as I have seen.

Photograph, Leander Moore at Central Church of Christ (Deaf), 1960s. Nashville, Tennessee.

Central Church of Christ, Nashville, TN, 7 December 1939

A strategy for congregational research

My Nashville research across the last ten years has evolved from an interest in Central Church (where I was then Associate Minister) to a much, much larger scope including each congregation in the county, every para-church ministry based in Nashville, and how the larger issues within Stone-Campbell history interact with local history in one city resulting in the ministry conducted on ground, in the trenches, in the congregations.  With that comes the innumerable evangelists, ministers and pastors who held forth weekly from pulpits across the city. Ambitious? Yes.  Perhaps too ambitious.  That may be a fair criticism, but the field is fertile and the more I survey the landscape and read the sources and uncover additional data, the more I’m convinced to stay the course.

In the last four years especially I have focused my efforts to obtain information about the smaller congregations, closed congregations, particularly congrgations which have closed in the last 40 to 50 years.  My rationale for this focus is that some history here is in some cases, potentially recoverable.  There are larger affluent congregations which have appearances of vitality…they are going nowhere soon.  I can only hope some one among them is heads-up enough to chronicle their ongoing history and preserve the materials they produced.  On the other hand are congregations which have long-ago closed and chances are good we might not ever know anything of them except a name and possibly a location (for example, Carroll Street Christian Church is absorbed into South College Street in 1920 forming Lindsley Avenue Church of Christ…no paper is known to exist from this church, and I can’t even find one photo of the old building, and there is no one remaining who has living memory of this congregation).  For all practical purposes Carroll Street Church of Christ may remain as mysterious in twenty years as it does now.  I’d be surprised to learn of 3 people now living in the city of Nashville who have even heard of it.

But the several congregations that closed in the 50’s-80’s (and some even in the last five years) remain accessible if only through documents and interviews.  Theoretically the paper (the bulletins, meeting minutes, directories, photographs, even potentially sermon tapes) has a good chance of survival in a basement or attic or closet.  Chances are still good that former members still live, or folks might be around–in Nashville or elsewhere–who grew up at these congregations.  Theoretically.  Potentially.  Hopefully.

Yet as time marches on there are more funerals…for example in the last year I missed opportunities to speak with three elderly folks about their memories at these now-closed churches…they were too ill to speak with me and now they are gone!  I did, however, speak at length with one woman in ther 90’s who I thought died long ago!  She is quite alive and lucid!

So from time to time I will highlight on this blog these closed congregations…closed in the recent past…with hopes that someone somewhere might look for them (I get hits on this blog by folks looking for all sorts of things, among them are several Nashville Churches of Christ).  Maybe we can stir up some interest and surface additional information.

A few days ago I posted about one such congregation, the Twelfth Avenue, North Church of Christ.  I have in the queue a post about New Shops Church of Christ in West Nashville.  There are more, several more.

Stay tuned, and remember, save the paper!