Sharp spire and careful stonework: you have found one of the most architecturally distinguished churches in uptown Charlotte. St. Peter's Episcopal Church was organized in 1834 and constructed its first permanent building in 1844, making it one of the earliest Episcopal congregations in the region. The present stone Gothic Revival church, with its sharp spire and careful stonework, was completed in 1895 and remains a striking counterpoint to the glass towers that have risen around it.
Episcopalianism represented the religion of the planter class and the professional elite in antebellum North Carolina, and St. Peter's congregation included many of Charlotte's most prominent nineteenth-century families. During the Civil War, Confederate President Jefferson Davis received communion at this altar during his flight south after Richmond fell in April 1865, one of the most dramatic moments in the church's long history. The church's graveyard contains the graves of soldiers, mayors, and civic leaders spanning nearly two centuries.
Notice the stone tracery of the windows and the careful brickwork of the nave — craftsmanship the surrounding century of construction largely forgot how to do.