Grafton Street Methodist Church - Halifax, Nova Scotia - Doorways of the World on Waymarking.com

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Grafton Street Methodist Church - Halifax, Nova Scotia

in Doorways of the World

Posted by:  T0SHEA

20T E 454442 N 4943631

Many Methodist and Presbyterian Churches in Canada became United Churches with Church Union in 1925. Grafton Street Methodist, however, went a different direction, changing from Methodist to Presbyterian.

The first Grafton Street Methodist Church was built in 1852, only to burn in one of Halifax's many fires on February 23, 1868. The present Grafton Street Methodist Church replaced that church, opening for services on November 7, 1869. The building remained a Methodist church until June of 1925, when Church Union in Canada made it redundant.

Designed by David Sterling and built with neither bell tower nor steeple, the brick and stone Victorian Gothic church has, instead, a very nice entrance centred in the façade of the building. With double wood doors separated by a round column with decorated capital and base, the entrance is framed by a heavy stone Gothic arch with stained glass in the arched transom. There are six individual panes in the transom with heavy tracery setting them apart. The wood board doors are supported by intricate and ornate wrought iron hinges, probably hand made.

The few Presbyterians who resisted union established The Presbyterian Church, Halifax in 1925. Very soon afterward the church bought this building and in 1930 it was renamed to become The Presbyterian Church of Saint David.

The Presbyterian Church of Saint David was born in 1925, when its parent, The Presbyterian Church in Canada, was in danger of disintegrating in the face of inter-denominational church union among Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists.
The Presbyterian men and women who resisted union did so positively and constructively by first forming the Halifax chapter of the Presbyterian Church Association in 1924 and then establishing The Presbyterian Church, Halifax (incorporated, 1925).

Soon afterwards, the Presbyterians leased and then purchased the former Grafton Street Methodist Church as a congregational home. Built in 1868-69, in the early English style of Trinity Methodist in Charlottetown, the building was designed by David Sterling, architect of Fort Massey Presbyterian (now United) Church in Halifax, and is a registered [Provincial] heritage property. It stands over and in the midst of the Old Methodist Burying Ground of Halifax, one of the most sacred sites of Maritime Methodism.
From Saint David's Presbyterian