Old Christ Church, Gothic Revival church in Historic Pensacola Village, Florida.
Old Christ Church is a white church at 405 South Adams Street in Pensacola, Florida, built in the Gothic Revival style. Its front gable holds five tall round-arched windows with dark louvered shutters, and a small gabled entry porch with a cross finial stands beside a square tower topped by a pyramidal roof and cross. A white picket fence runs along the base.
Episcopal priest Ralph Williston arrived in Pensacola in 1828 and obtained a charter and land for a church; the congregation was incorporated by the territorial Legislative Council in 1829, construction began in 1830, and the first services were held in 1832 under Reverend Addison Searle. During the Civil War, Union soldiers used the building as a barracks and military chapel, and regular services resumed in 1865.
The building's name changed with its users: after the congregation moved to a new Christ Church in 1902, Saint Cyprian's, a black Episcopal congregation, used it from 1903 to 1905. Deconsecrated in 1936 and given to the City of Pensacola, it served as the town library from 1937 to 1957. Since 1960 it has been occupied by the UWF Historical Trust and is shown on Historic Pensacola Village tours.
Old Christ Church stands at 405 South Adams Street and is part of Historic Pensacola Village, shown on the daily tours of the village. The entrance porch sits at the left end of the front gable, beside the square tower on the right.
In 1988 University of West Florida archaeologists dug beneath the church floor looking for the graves of three priests buried in the 1830s — Saunders, Peake and Flower. They found three unmarked burials in the area of the vestry demolished in 1879, along with traces of a burned First Spanish building absent from colonial maps.
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