Date: 1872
222 Church Street, Morrisville
Designated 11/23/2012
The Morrisville Christian Church is architecturally significant as an intact example of a simple, vernacular, frame church. Built in 1872-1873, it stands as a late-nineteenth-century church that was home to a small, independent, conservative congregation in a rural farming village in Wake County. Churches in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were often the center of religious and social life in small farming villages throughout North Carolina. The church building is representative of the growth and prosperity of small rural villages in Wake County that began to develop with the rise of the railroad in the years following the Civil War through World War I. The building’s character represents the simplicity of form and the restrained interpretation of popular architectural styles that are common in rural vernacular churches. The Morrisville Christian Church is historically and architecturally significant because it retains most of its original appearance, it displays a unique three-stage bell tower unlike any other remaining in the county, and because it is one of the few churches built by a small congregation that practiced independently of a larger denominational institution.