Antebellum Buildings: Institutional

Antebellum Buildings: Religious, Fraternal, and Institutional

Only three buildings within the district fall within this category: the building at 100 E. Fearing Street, the former First Methodist Church, and Christ Episcopal Church.

The two-story frame building at 100 E. Fearing, now used for storage by the Blades family whose house is adjacent on the east side, may be the first lodge built for Eastern Lodge No. 89 of the Masonic Order, chartered in 1825 in Elizabeth City.³¹ Both architectural and historical evidence supports this theory, although conclusive documentation has not yet been found. The following physical features indicate a construction date between ca. 1825 and 1850: pedimented gable ends, with molded box cornices and a large lunette in the north pediment, strip-paneled surrounds with plain corner blocks around several windows, exposed beaded ceiling joists on the first floor, and a barrel-arched plaster ceiling extending the length of the second floor, which is one large room. A similar treatment is found on the second floor on the Royal White Hart Lodge, which is the meeting room of the ca. 1820 Masonic Lodge in Halifax, North Carolina. The Fearing Street building is said to have originally been located on the northeast corner of Road and Fearing streets, where it served as a Negro fraternal lodge in the late nineteenth century. Existing documentation proves that the Eastern Lodge had a "temple" by 1826, used also by the Episcopal congregation until their first church building was completed,³² and in 1882 the Masonic temple was located on Road Street.³³ If the structure was indeed built ca. 1826 for the Eastern Lodge, it is among the oldest Masonic buildings in North Carolina.

Two of the three earliest churck congregations in Elizabeth City have antebellum buildings. The present Christ Episcopal Church, the second building of the congregation located at the northeast corner of Church and McMorrine streets, was completed in 1857,³⁴ and is the most distinguished church building in the city. The handsome brick Early English Gothic Revival style building was designed by J. Crawford Neilson, noted Baltimore architect during the second half of the nineteenth century. A Mr. Coates of Petersburg was the contractor.³⁵ Its most striking feature is a three-stage corner stair tower with chamfered third stage, lancet windows and a crenellated wooden parapet. The gabled main façade and front tower elevations have arcaded corbel courses, and the structure is trimmed in stone, wood and metal. The well-preserved original interior consists of a small vestibule and large sanctuary with an open-timbered ceiling with hammerbeam trusses. A narrow balcony with a sawnwork railing at the rear of the sanctuary contains the organ pipes. There are no galleries. The Tudor Revival style parish house north of the church is a 1925 addition.³⁶

The former First Methodist Church building, 305 E. Church Street, which was completed in the same year as the Episcopal Church, is also the second building of its congregation.³⁷ The handsome, brick Greek Revival style building, with a distyle-in-antis porch, Doric pilastered elevations, and a bracketed bell tower, served the congregation until 1921 when the present large church was erected at the northwest corner of Road and Church streets.³⁸ Soon after, the 1857 church was gutted and converted to an architecturally undistinguished three-story apartment house, with three-story porches surrounding the entire building.