By CAROLYN CLICK -
cclick@thestate.comHistoric Bethel AME Church is dark inside, its stained-glass windows removed and the openings boarded up, the oak pews empty, the towering pipe organ silent.
But within two years, the not-for-profit Renaissance Foundation plans to complete restoration of the downtown church as a cultural arts center, history museum and repository of the state’s African-American faith history.
“You’re preserving a piece of history that cannot be replaced,” Mary Skinner-Jones, the foundation’s executive director, said Wednesday.
Today, former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, the first African-American to integrate Clemson University, will preside over a unity breakfast to celebrate the impending transformation of the church at Sumter and Taylor streets. Gantt is an appropriate choice because his name will grace the new Center for African-American Arts and Culture in Charlotte.
(MP pictured with Harvey Gantt this a.m.)
Columbia’s red brick Romanesque structure was designed by black architect John Anderson Lankford and built in 1921, testament to the tenacity of its members, who raised funds through “Penny Clubs” and other outreach. The cost was $75,000.
The church, founded in the days after the Civil War and spiritual home to many of Columbia’s most prominent black families, hosted singer Marian Anderson in 1949. It was placed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Bethel flourished on the downtown corner until the mid-1990s, when the burgeoning congregation bought the more expansive Shandon Baptist Church property at 819 Woodrow St., where it remains today.
But Skinner-Jones said Bethel’s members refused to abandon the property, always expecting it to be transformed into something substantial.
“It’s a passion,” Skinner-Jones said. “If you talk to them, its history they don’t want to lose.”
The $5.7 million center will add to the “pedestrian-friendly” feel of the downtown historic corridor, said Latrice Williams, communications director for Historic Columbia Foundation.
She said Historic Columbia and the city have worked closely with Skinner-Jones to support the Bethel Church project.
“There is rich African-American history here, and we like to incorporate that in the interpretation of the city,” Williams said. “It just fits right into our mission and strategy of what we are trying to do here.”
So far, the Renaissance Foundation has raised $1.8 million and must raise another $1.5 million to qualify for federal historic tax credits to proceed with the renovation, Skinner-Jones said.
The stabilization of the building is complete, and asbestos removal is set to begin soon.
Shenandoah Restorations Inc. in Irmo is working to restore the stunning stained-glass windows that graced the church, she said.
The empty window spaces had been filled with murals drawn by college students under the auspices of the Columbia Museum of Art.
In addition to the performing arts center, in the second-floor sanctuary, the building will include:
• A first-floor museum that will become part of the National Heritage Tour. It will be the repository for the S.C. Black Hall of Fame and a place to showcase the contributions of the African-American faith community.
• A third-floor meditation space, to be known as the Bell Tower of Spirituality and Healing Chapel, for patients and their families and friends in nearby hospitals
As she picked through the darkened interior Wednesday, stepping over the red-carpeted floor speckled with chips of peeling paints, Skinner-Jones said she sees the past and the present
mingling.
“You look at the history of your past, and you grow from it,” she said.
Once restored, the building will be a place “for young people to connect the dots,” she said, to understand the lives of 20th-century African-Americans as they fought to end segregation and become fully participating members in society.
...that I question my sanity in taking a job in county government. Procurement, change orders, finance software without instructions - what in the @#$%& was I thinking?
