Athens church named to historic register

PDF: National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

Over the coming year, Trinity United Methodist Church in Athens, Tenn., will celebrate more than its centennial. Members also will bask in the church's acceptance last week to the National Register of Historic Places.

"It's a wonderful honor," said pastor R. Steven Brown, "The sanctuary of the church is historical in the fact that it will be 100 years old next Oct. 10, (2010)."

The church, adjacent to the Tennessee Wesleyan College campus and facing the McMinn County Courthouse, also is noteworthy as the only Badgley and Nicklas designed church in Tennessee, according to Paul Archambault, historic preservation planner for the Southeast Tennessee Development District.

Badgley & Nicklas Architects of Cleveland, Ohio, specialized in the design of churches. The principles were Sidney Badgley and William H. Nicklas.

Built in 1909 and 1910, Trinity United Methodist church boasts the Badgley and Nicklas markers of two towers, stained glass windows with stone tracery, an octagonal dome ceiling and eight columns.

Like Badgley and Nicklas' First Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas, the use of the number "eight" in church features represents the eight people who survived the Great Flood, according to Mr. Archambault.

Athens' former mayor, John Proffitt, a church member who turned his church centennial planning into a quest for the National Register badge, said another distinctive aspect of the church is its "Akron sanctuary."

"The sanctuary is built in a semi-circle. The church pews face the alter in a circular style."

The floor plan is called the Akron style, Mr. Proffitt said, because the first one like it was built in the First Methodist Church of Akron, Ohio.

In the Akron sanctuary plan, the central open space extends to smaller surrounding Sunday School classroom spaces that have movable partitions to close them off from sanctuary or to extend the sanctuary for special events.

By the 1890s, the Akron plan became a standard for medium to large Methodist Churches, according to Mr. Archambault's research.

The Athens church's stained-glass windows, brick, pews, doors, balusters, rails and wood floors are original, according to Mr. Archambault and Mr. Proffitt.

Today, the church is used by its congregation of 200 and by students at the adjacent Tennessee Wesleyan College.

Mr. Proffitt said the church will extend its yearlong celebration to all of Athens' 13,334 residents during the town's two yearly outdoor events -- the Pumpkintown Festival in October and the Moofest in the spring.

"We're doing a timeline right now, and we're going to display the history of our church, Methodism and what was going on in our country and in the world," he said.