When was the main church (or the equivalent of a church) ...

[memphis]

Oldest Church in Memphis burned down in 2006. First Methodist.



This thread inspired me to look at a few old churches around town. I looked up the First Baptist Church. Here's their picture

 And I found this hilarious little blurb on their website:
All Baptist Churches are Different
  In recent years, our community has discussed the welcome to be found in a Baptist church. Although we at First Baptist Church of Memphis respect the freedom of every Baptist congregation to govern itself as it wishes, we also regret times when all Baptists are “painted with the same brush.”
Please know that First Baptist welcomes all individuals for worship, fellowship, and Christian service. In fact, our church Mission Statement says, The First Baptist Church of Memphis is a faith community seeking to help all persons know God through Jesus Christ, forming them spiritually in the image of Christ, and ministering in the name of Christ.
Although we sometimes fail, our goal is to be Christ-like. Through Christ, God has accepted us; thus we strive to be a community where believers and seekers alike can belong and support one another.
Again, as an autonomous Baptist church we do not agree with all other Baptist churches on certain issues. We hope our convictions will help us make a difference in our community for Jesus Christ. Our doors are open, and a warm welcome awaits all who wish to join us and serve with us.
 
Church Staff and Deacon Body of First Baptist Church – Memphis

As for main church, here is the biggest megachurch in town, Bellevue Baptist. Their head pastor was president of the entire Southern Baptist Convention for three terms, and was rather influential in making them the right wing nutter organization they are today. They've been around forever too, but ran away to the new side of town about 25 years ago and built a facility that can seat 7,000 people. They're all about the tv cameras, the sophisticated projected graphics, music, choreography, the works. They also had a molestation/cover up scandal few years back. It looks something like this.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Well, Cinnaminson is quite clearly a Catholic town... so whenever this was built, 50s or 60s most likely. We used to have our get-togethers for the swim team in their cafeteria, and my friend just got married there over the summer. 

[Velasco]

The cathedral of my diocese. It was begun to construct at the end of the 15th century but, after several reforms, the front has a mixture of Gothic and neoclassic styles.

Another old church in the region is La Concepción, in the city of La Laguna (Tenerife). Dated in 1511, though the conquistador Alonso Fernández de Lugo chose the emplacement in 1496. Baroque and Tuscan styles. It most distinctive feature is the tower (see below). However, the cathedral of La Laguna diocese is a newer church built between 1904 and 1913, in neoclassic and neogothic styles. Less interesting from the architectural point of view, in my opinion. Probably it would be possible to find architectural similarities between these churches in the Canaries and some churches in Latin America.

[Insula Dei]

Founded in 986. Current version is 15th century. What do I vote?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyways, the old parish church is supposed to be 13th century but there was at least some restoration work done in the 19th century. It isn't really in the village - which is basically a small 19th century industrial port - and I'm not sure if it's used for anything now (keep meaning to check, never get round to it). The current parish church was consecrated in 1865. The Presbyterian chapel was first built in the 1850s and last rebuilt in 1915.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Nearby, of course, is Bangor Cathedral. Which was founded around 525 AD or so and dedicated to St Deiniol about twenty years later. The current structure, though, is 12th century, massively restored in the 19th century.

[Simfan34]

Here's my diocese's cathedral, the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, mostly completed by 1925 but not formally dedicated until 1957.



Here's my parish church, a rather hideous construct, built in 1993.



Now that I go to college, I usually attend mass here, in Saint Paul's Chapel, a charming building built in 1907 along with the rest of the campus, although by the firm of Howells & Stokes, as opposed to McKim, Mead, and White. A very handsome building nonetheless.



Here's what it looks like inside, with its notable Gustavino ceilings.

 

When the chapel is closed, I attend mass at the nearby Church of Notre Dame, from 1909, which I may or may not have been baptised in (small world, huh)- my folks aren't entirely sure and no one's ever bothered to look at the papers. A solid neoclassical edifice- but there's more!



And then we have some other nifty churches in the area as well. Here is Riverside Church, built by John Rockefeller in 1930 because the of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine wouldn't let him on the board of trustees as he was Baptist and, well, it was an Episcopal cathedral. At 400 odd feet, it's the tallest church in the US. Rather impressive for a simple parish church, and it also has the effect of making the (rather large) nave look rather short from the outside. You can see the tower from most points from campus, and hear its bells from part of it, and when you stand at the corner of 120th and Broadway, or better yet, in the courtyard of the Union Theological Seminary, it seems that you might be at neo-Gothic Yale or Princeton as opposed our Beaux-Arts campus.





And here is the one that takes the cake- the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. The world's largest cathedral (as opposed to, say, a basilica), it was built in- well, that's the thing- it's not exactly finished:



Construction started in 1892 and has been continuing on and off ever since, mainly on the off stage nowadays. The last part that was built was \part of the south tower (which is notably cleaner) It's likely to stay that way for quite some time; there aren't too many Episcopals these days and even that red building to the south is landmarked, so technically, they can't demolish it and build the transept that is supposed to go there. Another problem is that most of the monies the cathedral has had in the past decade or so has gone to repairing damage to a fire from a couple years ago.



It's gone through a number of design changes- from Romanesque to the crossing up (the rounded arches in the nave are a giveaway, as is the domed crossing) to English Perpendicular then to French Gothic. The result is rather effective in conveying the idea of being an authentic mediæval cathedral that took hundreds of years to build and went through several architectural revisions (which it all has), it would be entirely so if not for the fact that, it, well, was in the United States. A beauty regardless.



These are the churches in Simfan's life. If not for a few words, it would probably apply to the women thereof pretty well, too.

EDIT: It seems the internet ate a paragraph about Notre Dame. Here's what it looks like inside:



A grotto! Well, not really, but I bought it for far longer then I should have.

[Northeast Rep Snowball]

I'll have to check with Alfred, but we don't really have a main church here, one has an organ I thnk, but by that standerd Eastman is our biggest church.

[memphis]

Simfan, thanks for the great pics. So many of the older churches create a sense of awe through their architecture. Here's the interior of Bellevue, the huge megachurch I mentioned earlier. Not quite the same. Something rotten happenned to design after WWII and is getting progressively worse.

Quite a contrast from my favorite local church, Idlewild Presbyterian, built in 1926.

[Simfan34]

Something rotten happened to design after WWII and is getting progressively worse.

This. People tend to notice this, and it really is two things. One is modernism- insipid, bland, reliant on size and gimmickry. Modernism led to the loss of teaching of proportions, scale, and the like, which is most buildings look tacky and tasteless.  I'm not wholly opposed to modernism, but traditionalism is usually the solution. Look at average buildings before the war, especially houses. Slate roofs, stone window sills, hand carved features, these are things one saw in even lower-class edifices but now are reserved to the elite. So technology plays a role as well.

Oh, and labor costs.