Old Ship African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church rises in front of you. Feel the weight of a congregation established in 1852 — the oldest African American church congregation in the city — rooted on this very plot through four successive buildings. The structure before you is the congregation’s fourth home: a Classical Revival–style building designed by Jim Alexander and completed in 1918, its lines and proportions reflecting the decisions of that year.
Imagine generations coming and going through this doorway, and the way the sanctuary has been a constant even as buildings changed. Later, in 1982, cameras rolled here for scenes of the television movie Sister, Sister, a small moment of popular culture layered onto a long local story. The church’s significance has been formally recognized: it was placed on the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on March 3, 1976, and added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 24, 1991.
A congregation born in 1852, a 1918 building by Jim Alexander, a place on both state and national registers: those are the facts carried by the façade ahead of you and the neighborhood it has served for generations.