Placed on the National Register in December 1990, this landmark church with a striking striking 87-foot, turreted tower is one of Danville’s premier landmarks visible from almost anywhere in town. The church is the city’s purest example of Romanesque Revival architecture, its brick detailing, monumental massing, and incorporation of other materials all emphasizing the style. This idiom continues on the interior, especially in the sanctuary where Romanesque-style arches are repeated in the wainscoting and the communion and gallery rails. Currently, the church continues to accept donations to meet expenses for the stabilization and restoration of the tower, which cost over $230,000.

A portion of the structure, which assumed its present form in I 89,has the longest record of use of any congregation in the city. Continually occupied since 1867, and reflecting the prosperity of its members during the tobacco boom era, the facility is known as the “Mother Church of Methodism in Danville”. The congregation was the first to emanate from the city’s first Methodist church organized on the corner of Wilson and Lynn streets in 1834. By 1865, when that church was experiencing growing pains, plans for a larger house of worship led to a split in the congregation. One group constructed a new church building on Lynn Street in the vicinity of the old one. Following the lead of Maj. William Sutherlin, the other group organized the Main Street facility on a lot selected and purchased by him. After losing its precipitous spire from 1873 in a freak windstorm, the church was topped with a cupola before the entire facade was rebuilt in its present form by the builder, J.R. Pleasant in 1891. A large, flanking education building, erected in the 1920’s, echoes the church’s Romanesque detailing. 

The focal point of the sanctuary, a mural of the Transfiguration which was painted in 1908 by the artist, C. Lecchi, is a notable feature. The eleven bells in the tower are unique in Danville and were given to the church in 1909 in memory of lames C. Penn by his wife and children. Together, these bells weigh 8,675 pounds. 

Contributions to the restoration of the tower can be sent to the church at 767 Main Street, to the attention of John Fernstrom, Treasurer.