Raleigh church's neighbors want a miracle

RALEIGH -- Around the 500 block of South Person Street, many buildings still show shingles ripped from the roof, chimneys knocked apart, blue tarpaulin stretched across the damage.

Raleigh's tornado tore through here in April, and among the broken buildings in its wake, it left Gethsemane Seventh-Day Adventist Church - a neighborhood landmark dating to 1920.

The white concrete-block church owns a pair of distinctions: It's one of the first black SDA churches in North Carolina, and it's built in an offbeat, stucco style with smaller rocks hand-pressed onto each block.

But now, it stands condemned by the city of Raleigh, boards over its stained-glass windows, inch-wide gaps between its blocks.

Neighbors in Raleigh's South Park community hope it can be spared, unlike so many of the homes and other buildings connected to nearby Shaw University.

"If we continue to destroy buildings in this neighborhood, we aren't going to have any history to point to but historic signs," said J.E. Williams, who lives within sight of Gethsemane. "We're becoming a neighborhood of vacant lots."

In 1920, black Seventh-Day Adventists were still a rarity by comparison to other faiths. When the first such church started in Tennessee in the 1880s, estimates of total black membership in the country came in at around 50.

By the 1980s, the congregation grew large enough to sell the building and move out of downtown, but the white block church at Person and Cabarrus streets still acts as a spiritual home.

"There's a lot of love and TLC that went into building that church," said Jenny Harper, a recent arrival in the neighborhood who lives nearby. "Tearing it down and turning it into a parking lot would really set us back."

Covering 30 blocks, built mostly between 1900 and 1940, the East-Raleigh South Park district is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and the area is being considered as historic district in Raleigh much like Boylan Heights and Oakwood, where design changes need special approval.

For about 10 years, Gethsemane has been owned by Empire Properties, known for its preservation projects, notably All Saints Chapel, which was moved six blocks to East Street and renovated.

But with the building condemned, Raleigh developer Greg Hatem said Empire has no plans to renovate.

"The tornado lifted up the roof and twisted it," he said.

Hatem said he would love to see the building saved, but keeping people from being harmed inside is more important.

Neighbors have collected more than 200 names on a petition to keep Gethsemane standing. One interested buyer, Phuc Tran, is out of the country in Brazil, but he said he plans to pursue saving the church when he returns.

Meanwhile, neighbors wait, hoping someone will fill an empty space.