Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501310068
SECTION: STREET BY STREET PAGE: 11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
There were 24 black churches in Gainsboro and Northeast in 1950; now, none is in the building it originally occupied.
The city and the housing authority helped many of the bigger churches build new sanctuaries. First Baptist and Hill Street Baptist rebuilt in Gainsboro. Others, like High Street Baptist, pastored by former Mayor Noel Taylor, moved to other neighborhoods.
Other churches had a harder time, and none took a worse beating than Greater Mount Zion Baptist Church.
It was founded in Northeast as Mount Zion Baptist in 1884. After its first building burned, the congregation built a wood-frame church in 1908. The minister baptized people in a nearby stream.
By the 1950s, the church was thriving under the Rev. Metz T. Coker. A new brick church, now called Greater Mount Zion to reflect its progress, was built at 326 Madison Ave. N.E.
Members had paid off that building and been debt-free for four years when they learned they would have to move. The city wanted to build the Roanoke Civic Center on their property.
Charles Meadows, 90 and a church trustee most of his life, remembers the pain of his pastor when he heard the news. Coker told him, "They can't make us move."
"I said, `No, my brother. We're going to have to leave here.'''
The city tore down the church in 1970. The civic center stands there now. Greater Mount Zion built its fourth and biggest church, at 1810 Grayson Ave. N.W., the next year.
Wesley White oversaw the Gainsboro project from its inception as the housing authority's development director. White said the authority recognized the significance of Gainsboro's churches. "We needed to maintain the institutions," he said.
In 1976 correspondence with the Rev. R.R. Wilkinson, one of Roanoke's strongest civil-rights leaders and pastor of Hill Street Baptist Church in Gainsboro, White wrote, "We have a difficult job in Gainsboro. We are trying to rebuild. Key thing is the church. ... . We will acquire the church some way."
The old Hill Street Baptist, on a section of McDowell Avenue Northwest that the authority wanted, had turned down the authority's offer of $47,000 to build a new church in Gainsboro. Wilkinson warned White, "You will have to cross many bridges before you get it."
Eventually, the authority helped Hill Street build its new church on Madison Avenue.
White said he created a miniproject-within-the-project just to help First Baptist build its new Gainsboro church.
Walter Wheaton has been a trustee at First Baptist more than 40 years. "We were asked by the housing authority to stay there and help stabilize the Gainsboro area. They made it possible for us to stay, economically."
The authority helped the church acquire its site on Wells Avenue and spent about $90,000 on grading. To widen Wells Avenue near the Hotel Roanoke, the Virginia Department of Transportation recently paid the church $160,000 for parcels on the edge of its property.
Wheaton is glad the church still is in Gainsboro, but he questions the wisdom of the whole Gainsboro project. "To be honest with you, I don't think it has done a lot for the development of minorities.
"The majority of our parishioners don't live in the immediate area. What we did was preserve the identity of what formerly was there."
by CNB