Restoration of iconic Black history site should wrap up by fall, city officials say

“Plumbing, electrical, ADA compliance — those things were never designed in this building, and we’re having to figure out a way to fit them in organically to preserve the history,” assistant Community Services Director Jessica Sowell said.

Originally planned to be complete by mid-2022, the $1.6 million renovation project at Zion Hill Church at Bois D’ Arc and Lanana streets has been impacted by two years of supply chain breakdowns and other issues associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are looking at fall of this year, but we don’t have an exact date,” Sowell said. “Once we do, I’ll be telling everybody about it.”

Many Nacogdoches natives who grew up admiring the Gothic revival style building were thrilled at the news that a decades-long effort to revitalize and reopen it to the public will soon come to fruition.

“As a kid many times I went to that church, unfortunately more often when it was in disrepair,” said District Judge Jeff Davis, who grew up in Nacogdoches. “It’s been a 30-year project, getting this done.”

Built in 1914 by famed architect Diedrich Rulfs, the building likely wouldn’t be standing today, Sowell said, if the Nacogdoches County Historical Society had not intervened in the 1990s, raising money and securing grants for major repairs after the church sat vacant and deteriorating for a decade.

Historic district

The historical society in 2010 deeded the building to the city, and it has since been a work in progress as more grants and donations were raised through the years to restore and repurpose it into a museum and events venue.

“Our plan is to focus on the African American history of that region, of the church and the neighborhood around it,” said Sowell, who pointed out that Zion Hill Church is part of a larger area that doesn’t resemble a typical historic district.

The Zion Hill Historic District is roughly bounded by Park Street, Lanana Creek, Oak Grove Cemetery and North Lanana Street.

It grew and developed during the 1880s and 1890s as a Black neighborhood on what was then the northeast edge of Nacogdoches. Residents typically worked in downtown businesses or for affluent white families living on nearby Mound Street.

Its shotgun and New Orleans style homes are largely just as they were in the early 1900s.

“Those aren’t things you normally see preserved,” Sowell said. “The Victorian homes, any place that Sam Houston set foot in, those get preserved, but not everyday homes.”

Church history

Founded in 1878 by the Rev. Lawson Reed, the Zion Hill congregation predates the building on Bois d’Arc Street, its fourth location. Reed held the first services under a brush arbor, moving to a wood frame building on Park Street and then to a building on Logansport Street.

As upper-class white neighbors expanded in the 1910s, Zion Hill was pressured to relocate.

The church purchased land on Bois d’Arc Street from Nacogdoches businessman John Schmidt, a German immigrant who co-owned Mayer & Schmidt. Schmidt requested no down payment for the land and financed construction of the new building under Rulfs, his longtime friend and a fellow German immigrant.

The church was completed in 1914 at a cost of $7,223 — around $215,000 today.

For nearly 75 years, it was a social and religious center of activity for residents of the Zion Hill neighborhood.

Justice of the Peace Dorothy Tigner-Thompson grew up just around the corner from Zion Hill and was baptized there at age 5. She remembers playing in the area behind the parsonage and going to vacation Bible school in the summer in the church, which was sometimes a refuge for coastal residents escaping storms.

“They would house people in the church that needed a place to come and be safe,” she said

She is among those excited to see the church restored. Even though she was grown when she last saw the interior, it didn’t seem any smaller, as those of childhood memories often do.

“I went in just after they removed the pews, and it looks larger to me,” she said.

The future

Plans for the building as an event venue include meetings, reunions, concerts or weddings, Sowell said.

“We want this to be a building the community can use, just like it was when it was a church,” she said.

On the museum side, Sowell said the Historic Sites Department continues to seek photos and documents related to its past use to be used in a permanent exhibit.

“Pictures, stories, news articles — if you went to church there, please share that with us,” Sowell said. “We have a few pictures of this church, and when I saw a few, I mean maybe five.”

The city’s Historic Sites Department can be reached at 936-560-4441 or by email at [email protected].