Birmingham Churches and Their Cornerstones 65
McCoy United Methodist Church was once the campus neighborhood church for Birmingham-Southern College, Alabama’s leading liberal arts college. The college is closely connected to the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. Today the college is hosting Birmigham’s thirty-eighth Martin Luther King Jr. Day Unity Breakfast. The church was founded as Owenton Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1901. The church sits between the college and Legion Field on the corner of Arkadelphia Road and 8th Avenue West.
As the neighborhood changed the congregation declined and disbanded in 1993. The suriving Perpendicular Gothic Revival church complex was erected in the 1920s. The 1924 cornerstone is on the Sunday school building which is on the street corner, not on the sanctuary itself. It is situated back from the busy highway in the middle of the site.
Other than James H. McCoy, for home the church is named, no indvidiuals’ names appear on the cornerstone. Instead there is the statement from 1 Peter 1:25 “The word of the Lord endureth forever.”
A second stone appears in front of the sanctuary, between the stair cases, it states, “For other foundation can no man lay than which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (I Corinthans 3:11).
After the congreation closed, the City of Birmingham owned the building for about eighteen years, but sold it in February 2023 to Freedom 1957 LLC, which intends to develop it as an office, non-profit, and venue space.
For more information on the church, see its entry on Bhamwiki.
Read this first post for more on this series on Birmingham churches and their cornerstones.
Chasing Churches 