January 24, 2024
Word has been received from the Department of Arkansas Heritage that the First Presbyterian Church of Hope, Arkansas, has been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places for its architecture and local significance. The history of the church and its manse or parsonage was submitted to the quarterly meeting of the State Review Board in Little Rock on Dec. 6, 2023, and passed the Board. It went next to the Department of the Interior in Washington, DC where its approval was finalized on January 12, 2024. Official letters of notification to relevant officials are pending or have already been sent out depending on difficult weather conditions current in the state.
The First Presbyterian Church of Hope is the oldest church in the City of Hope although many citizens of Hope probably do not realize it. Its history reaches back 165 years to 1859, two years before the outbreak of the Civil War and 15 years before the coming of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad and the establishment of the City of Hope.
What is now the First Presbyterian Church of Hope has been in five different locations. In 1859, a group of planters were interested in starting a church for their community a few miles north of present-day Hope and hired a part-time minister to serve their families and slaves starting on January 1, 1860. The construction of a simple frame church began on January 1, 1861. The Civil War began two months before the new church, known as the Greenwood Church, was formally organized. The church survived the Civil War and decided in 1874 to move a few miles south to a location in the new town of Hope laid out in 1873 by the coming of the Cairo and Fulton Railroad.
The railroad attorney Henry Moore Loughborough gave the church its second location at the corner of North Main and East D Street in the new town named for his young daughter Hope. The Greenwood Church became the Hope Presbyterian Church. In 1883, for the convenience of its growing membership who did not live in the north part of Hope, the church purchased three lots at the intersection of Hazel and Second Streets south of the railroad tracks and built a larger frame church known as the Hazel Street Church. Services commenced on the first Sunday in January 1884.
The first pastor to serve at this third location also built a manse on the property for his family with the aid of the church members. This third location of the church would last for twelve years until it and the manse both completely burned under mysterious circumstances in March of 1897. With its membership continuing to grow in the thriving railroad town, the congregation decided to build a much more elaborate modern structure of red brick with a slate roof, stained glass leaded windows and a tall spire. It faced south on Second Street at the intersection of Second and Hazel.
Samuel Brundidge, a member of the church and local manufacturer of brick, accepted the contract for the building. The first service at this fourth location took place on January 2, 1898. Though it was a handsome building for a church that continued to grow, the Second Street church would experience serious structural problems within the early decades of the 20th century and would undergo extensive remodeling in 1925 that included the removal of the spire. Because of rebuilding costs, the Depression and World War II, the Second Street church did remain the site of the First Presbyterian Church in Hope until the completion of the current church on South Main Street with its first service on January 31, 1954.
Years of work had gone into the new Church. The church had purchased the land where it currently stands in 1948 from Mrs. Sally Lloyd Berry. The site had been the home of her parents Thomas Alexander Lloyd, a Confederate veteran of the Civil War, and his wife. After the death of her father in 1916 and her mother in 1930, Sally Berry and her husband, a native of Virginia, decided to return to his home state of Virginia. She and her husband had been active in the church along with other of Sally's relatives in Hope.
The north 100 feet of the property was designated as the site of the manse or parsonage. The manse to house the church pastor and his family was built in 1951 by F. N. Porter, a local contractor and member of the church, in the Cape Cod Cottage style. The church's pastor Rev. L. T. Lawrence and his family would be the first occupants of the manse, and he would be the first pastor of the new church. He spent the rest of his career in Hope. He died in 1968 and is buried in Memory Gardens Cemetery with his wife. His portrait still hangs in the entrance hallway of the church.
With the completion of the manse, work moved on to the design of the church and the selection of an architect. Arthur N. McAninch of Little Rock got the job. Born in Little Rock in 1897, he was the son of Samuel Judson McAninch and Jessie Ladd McAninch. The father had come to Little Rock from Tennessee as a railroad employee who then turned to being a merchant and operating a store until his death in 1916. His son Arthur attended high school but did not appear to have any further formal education. As a young man, Arthur worked as a store clerk, mail carrier and store cashier before becoming a draughtsman at Mann and Stern, an architectural firm in Little Rock, in 1926. It was probably at Mann and Stern that he met John Petter, a trained architect and Englishman, who had come to Little Rock in 1924.
In 1929, Petter and McAninch formed a partnership that lasted three years. During this period, they had a role in the building of Hope High School in 1931, a high school that is still in use today. McAninch continued his career after Petter's departure. In 1939, he had another major project in Hope when he designed the 1939 Hempstead County Courthouse in Hope in the Art Deco style. After years of fighting and disputes, the county seat had moved from the early town of Washington to the newer railroad town of Hope. After service in World War II, McAninch returned to Little Rock and resumed his architectural career. He partnered with John Roscoe Mahnker, Jr. who remained with McAninch through the construction of the Hope church in 1953 and 1954. McAninch continued his career until his death in 1965. He is buried in Roselawn Cemetery in Little Rock with family members.
McAninch designed the First Presbyterian Church in Gothic Revival style. It has a high hipped roof with tall colorful windows on the west side of the sanctuary and windows with yellow crosses lining the sides of the sanctuary. The attention of the congregation is drawn to the chancel where the pastor and the choir sit. The church is a "cruciform" church although many people may not realize it. It is in the shape of the cross. The pastor enters from a study or library to the right, and the choir enters from their dressing and storage room to the left.
The building has the shape of an "L" with the sanctuary at the foot of the "L". The upper or northern part of the church which contains a chapel, church offices and Sunday School rooms also has the shape of the cross. A tower with crenellated battlements similar to castles in Europe stands at the intersection of the foot and the leg of the L-shaped building. All of these elements are seen in Gothic Revival architecture along with buttresses along the high walls of the church that have a decorative and structural function. The buttresses support the walls and are attractive too, but this style was becoming unusual in the mid-1950s.
Movement was toward Colonial or Neo-Colonial architecture such as the sanctuary of the nearby First Baptist Church with its handsome porch and impressive white columns or to more modern styles of architecture. The only other example of Gothic Revival architecture in Hope is Saint Mark's Episcopal, a smaller wooden frame church at the corner of Elm and Third St. It was built in 1904 and was nominated to the National Register in 1976. First Methodist Church in Prescott is also in the Gothic Revival style with a hipped roof, colorful stained-glass windows and buttresses along the exterior walls of the sanctuary. It was, however, built in 1928, some twenty-five years before work started on the First Presbyterian Church in Hope, when the Gothic Revival style was more prevalent.
Prominent figures in Hope had roles in building the new Presbyterian Church and not all were church members. N. P. O'Neal, a major manufacturer of brick in Hope at the time, lent the Presbyterians money to build the church, and his son-in-law B. W. Edwards was the contractor who worked with McAninch to construct the church. Church members also contributed their time, money and skills to building the church. Some people who grew up in the church went on to become figures of state, national and international consequence, but that may be a story for another time.
