RALEIGH -- Anyone who has ever renovated an old building knows you're bound to find surprises when you start tearing out sheetrock and taking down drop ceilings.
Fortunately, for the congregation of First Presbyterian Church in downtown Raleigh, most of those surprises have been pleasant ones.
The church is about midway through a project to restore and modernize its 111-year-old sanctuary building and add a new building to its campus at the corner of Morgan and Salisbury streets, where the church has faced Union Square since before the Capitol was built.
"This reflects a renewed commitment to our ministry in the downtown," said the Rev. Edward A. McLeod Jr. "This kind of anchors us here for the next century."
First Presbyterian was organized in 1816, and its red brick sanctuary dates to about 1900, with Tiffany stained-glass windows and a bell tower on the corner of Morgan and Salisbury. The building was last renovated in the 1950s, and some of what's being done now will undo changes made then.
"Renovations made over the years allowed us to have air conditioning and creature comforts, but in the process, they covered up a lot of things," said Jim Nichols, co-chairman of the building committee.
The work includes the restoration of a large gathering space that was originally lit by clerestory windows and connected to the adjacent sanctuary by three soaring arched doorways. The space was divided into rooms in the 1950s, as the doorways disappeared behind sheetrock and the windows were obscured by a drop ceiling.
When the sheetrock came down, workers discovered brick columns topped with ornate capitals made of terra cotta, which the church has decided to restore. And above that drop ceiling, they found beautiful bead board, looking almost new in the natural light from the windows.
"Any time you tear into a 110-year-old building, you're going to get some surprises," said Mark Turner, the church administrator. "Some of them have not been so great, but some of them have been wonderful."
Until this year, the sanctuary building was flanked by a classroom building that went up in the 1920s and had become structurally unsound. A weakened foundation caused one corner to sag. After it was demolished, workers discovered it had been built over a dump or an old well filled with trash that yielded blown-glass and stoneware bottles.
An 'energetic presence'
One goal of the project was to reclaim that space and improve flow on a campus that covers about half a city block and had evolved piecemeal over a century. The church hired Raleigh architect Frank Harmon to design a new education and office building with a glass front that will give the church a more public face.
"We will have a much more visible and energetic presence on Salisbury Street," McLeod said.
First Presbyterian is constrained by its downtown location. Parking is limited and there are few trees or other landscaping. As Turner notes, "they're not making any more real estate on this block."
But the church, which has seen its membership remain steady in recent years at about 1,250, has never seriously contemplated leaving downtown. The church's location is built into its mission: "Serving Christ from the heart of the city to the ends of the earth with love, faith, and action."
A value in community
The church emphasizes its outreach efforts. It hosts classes for people trying to kick alcohol and drugs or to earn a GED and has programs that offer assistance with rent, utilities and other needs.
"Being downtown gives us opportunity to be engaged where some real human needs are," McLeod said. "And it's just rooted in tradition. We're coming up on our bicentennial. I feel like when we're worshiping here that we're rooted in something that people value."
Next to that, he said, the scarcity of convenient parking and greenery seem mundane.
