News

St. Paul Episcopal Church to get local landmark designation

By Lightning Reports, Published: February 17, 2020

EDNEYVILLE — St. Paul's Episcopal Church, which is little changed from the time it was dedicated in 1910, is about to become Henderson County's next historic landmark.

The designation, which was submitted by the Henderson County Historic Resources Commission, is on the agenda for the Board of Commissioners on Wednesday. The designation as a local historic landmark makes a property eligible a 50 percent abatement of property taxes, academic in this case since the church is exempt from property taxes.

The Episcopal Church's use of the property dates to 1885, when Aaron W. and Elmira Whiteside donated two acres of land to the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina for a church. Situated on a ridge with a view of Sugarloaf, Bearwallow, Little Pisgah mountains and two Chickasaw Knobs, the site was home originally to a wooden structure "modeled on the lines of an overgrown and top heavy barn," the landmark designation report says. "Sometimes the altar had to be moved because rain leaked through the roof." A locomotive that called parishioners to workship is still in use today. A schoolhouse, attached to the south side of the church, may have been originated by the Rev. Thomas Wetmore, who had come to Hendersonville as rector of St. James Episcopal Church and was the founder, along with his wife, of Christ School in Arden.

After Wetmore left in 1900, few services were held at the mission church and the schoolhouse stood empty and unused. The Rev. Reginald N. Willcox, who arrived in 1902, held services every other Sunday evening and visited to minister to parishioners in times of need such as sickness or a death in the family. Willcox is credited with raising money to reopen the school, in 1905. The school operated seven to nine months each year, depending on how much Willcox and the church could raise for teacher pay. Preaching in the Northeast three months of the year to raise money for the Edneyville mission, Willcox and the church were soon able to open three more schools in rural northeastern Henderson County — Upward, Slick Rock and Bat Cave. The St. Paul school closed in 1914-15 and then closed for good in 1918, the year after Father Willcox left the area.

After a strong wind in 1907 badly damaged the roof of the original wooden church, Willcox retained the Asheville-based architectural firm of Smith & Carrier to design the new stone church. One of the principals was Richard Sharp Smith, the English immigrant who moved to New York City in 1883 and then was sent by Richard Morris Hunt to supervise the construction of the Biltmore House. In Asheville and elsewhere in Western North Carolina, Smith's influence can be found throughout downtown Asheville and in the Montford, Chestnut Hill and Grove Park neighborhoods and in Hendersonville, most prominently, in the neoclassical 1905 Henderson County Courthouse. A devoted Episcopalean, he served on the vestry of St. Mary's Episcopal Church, for which he designed a building in 1914. (The report for the local landmark nomination says that the Rev. Willcox worked with Smith & Carrier to design the church without specifically mentioning Richard Sharp Smith.)

Willcox and the architects designed a church that still stands today, mostly unchanged, of native granite, which church members themselves quarried from a site about 100 yards south of the church property. The load bearing walls are 18 inches thick throughout. A projecting gable end on the main roof shelters the church bell. The floors are heart pine. Two orange and rose colored stained glass windows that flank the altar on the north and south walls are dedicated "To Those Who Came Before" and "Those Who Are To Come," and are the only remaining original windows. Laws Stained Glass Studios Inc. of Statesville made the windows, at first the dual-colored, in 1910. Later, art glass windows were added. The three prominent stained glass windows behind the altar shows scenes of Jesus inviting a crowd to "Come unto ne, all ye that labour and are heavy laden" (center) and blessing the little children (left). The art glass window on the right depicts a scene of musical rejoicing and celebration to the Lord, the King from Psalm 150. New stained glass was added in 1951 and between 1972 and 2004, often by parishioners as memorials to family members.

Willcox designed the wooden altar, also still used today. Carved by Frank Geddes, a wood sculptor in Dorchester, Massachusetts, the heavy wooden piece was shipped by rail to the depot in Hendersonville, then transported the rest of the way to Edneyville by oxcart.

Church members did the construction of the church and the school associated with it. The native gray granite and usually its transportation to the construction site were donated. The cost, not including pews and other furnishings, was estimated to be $2,000.