201 East Rosemary Street
Text
OLD METHODIST CHURCH
1853, c. 1930, 1970s, c. 2013
Constructed in 1853, the church has been altered with the construction of a side and rear wing about 1930 and the renovation of these wings in the 1970s. However, the original, Greek Revival-style, front-gabled church remains largely intact. It is three bays wide and three bays deep with a stuccoed exterior and a prominent pediment with a sawn modillion cornice. The centered entrance consists of double-leaf two-panel doors with an eight-light transom in an inset, paneled surround. It is flanked by sixteen-over-sixteen wood-sash windows. Original wood-sash windows also remain on the right (east) elevation. A one-story, shed-roofed wing, constructed in several sections, extends along the left (west) elevation, facing Henderson Street. It has a brick exterior that was covered with stucco after 1974; that stucco was removed in 2013. It has metal-framed casement windows flanking a single-light door on the façade, a metal-framed casement window on the south end of the west elevation, and six-over-six wood-sash windows throughout the rest of the left elevation. An inset entrance at the rear has an entrance and window, each with a three-light transom. A four-bay-deep, gabled addition at the rear is one story with a raised basement and extends the full width of the church and shed-roofed wing. It is covered with wide weatherboards and has six-over-six wood-sash windows, a one-light French door facing Henderson Street, and concrete-block lattice curtain wall at the basement level of the rear (north) elevation. There is a also a low brick lattice wall along the sidewalk in front of the 1853 building on East Rosemary Street.
This building was constructed in 1853 under the congregation’s first pastor, the Reverend J. Milton Frost. The Methodist congregation moved to a new church on E. Franklin Street in 1889 and for a time the building was used by other congregations. In 1922, the building was purchased by I. M. Tull, who used it as a garage, and it continued this use under a Mr. Pickles for many years with the side and rear additions, originally constructed with flat roofs, added between 1925 and 1932 to accommodate this function. In 1949, James and John Webb opened a planning and architectural practice in the left side of the building. In the early 1970s, the Webb brothers purchased the building, renovated the side and rear wings (likely installing the current shed roofs at this time) and converted the former church-turned-garage into office space as well. The building was renovated again in 2013.
In the 2015 survey, this was deemed a Contributing Building.
SOURCE: Heather Wagner Slane, National Register of Historic Places Nomination: Chapel Hill Historic District Boundary Increase and Additional Documentation, Orange County, OR1750 (Raleigh, NC: North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office, 2015), courtesy of the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office.
