Fortitude Valley Primitive Methodist Church, Religious heritage site in Fortitude Valley, Australia.
Fortitude Valley Primitive Methodist Church is a single-storeyed rendered masonry building with a stone plinth on a raised corner site at 483 Brunswick Street. Its steep gabled roof is clad in corrugated iron, and the rectangular plan has five bays with buttressed walls, each holding a single lancet window. The symmetrical northern elevation has twin pointed arch doorways, a rose window and twin spires.
The Primitive Methodist congregation acquired the Brunswick Street site in 1875 and built this church in 1876, the third Primitive Methodist church in Brisbane, designed by architect Richard Gailey and erected by John Smith & Sons for about £1,100. The opening service was held on 24 September 1876. After the 1898 Methodist unification it became the Brunswick Street Methodist Church, and a vestry and classroom were added in 1900.
The church ran the Fortitude Valley Penny Savings Bank from its premises from 1886 until 1982, founded by Mr H Bennett and kept going by his family for over a century; it later offered first mortgage housing loans. The building has since housed the Potters Gallery and now the Brisbane Modern Art Gallery.
The former church stands on a raised corner site at 483 Brunswick Street, reached by twin stone stairs built into an unpainted brick retaining wall. The interior is a single storey with a steel-framed mezzanine added in 1982, and the building now operates as the Brisbane Modern Art Gallery, so visiting depends on the gallery's opening.
The Fortitude Valley Penny Savings Bank opened at the church in 1886, founded by Mr H Bennett and run mainly by his family for over a century. It encouraged small savers, later offered first-mortgage housing loans, and its profits went to church maintenance until it was wound up in 1993.
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