Green Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church | |
Green Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church
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| Location | 46 Sheridan St., Portland, Maine |
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| Coordinates | 43°39′50″N 70°14′58″W / 43.66389°N 70.24944°W / 43.66389; -70.24944 |
| Area | less than one acre |
| Built | 1914 |
| NRHP reference No. | 73000115[1] |
| Added to NRHP | January 17, 1973 |
The Green Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church is a historic church at 46 Sheridan Street in Portland, Maine. Built in 1914, it is home to Maine's oldest African-American congregation; it is named for Moses Green, a Portland resident who escaped slavery. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.[1]
The Green Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church is located in Portland's eastern Munjoy Hill neighborhood, at the corner of Sheridan and Monument Streets. It is a 2+1⁄2-story masonry structure, built out of concrete blocks and finished with a rough textured exterior. The building corners are partially quoined with smooth blocks. First-floor windows are rectangular sash, while second-floor windows have Gothic lancet arches, and are stained glass. The entrance is near the street corner, sheltered by an open gable-roofed wood frame vestibule; a short wood-frame tower rises through the roof above.[2]
Portland's Abyssinian Society was founded in 1828, and originally met in the Abyssinian Meeting House, one of the nation's oldest surviving African-American churches. A separate African-American congregation, the Fourth Abyssinian, was split off from the Second Parish Church in 1835 and merged into the Abyssinian in 1842. This church was built for that congregation in 1914, and was described in contemporary reports as "one of the most pretentious churches for a Black congregation in New England".[2]
The congregation is noted for its choir. In 1998, the choir and the Williams Temple Church of God in Christ choir formed the Maine Gospel Choir and performed The Movement, Revisited, a musical about the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, at Bates College.[3] In 2015, the choir performed at a memorial, multi-faith service held at Merrill Auditorium in Portland to honor those lost in the Charleston Church Shooting, a racially motivated mass shooting at a historically Black church. Green Memorial pastor Kenneth Lewis organized the memorial.[4]
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