The Bethel A.M.E. Church, known in its early years as Indianapolis Station or the Vermont Street Church, is a historic African Methodist Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Organized in 1836, it is the city's oldest African-American congregation. The three-story church on West Vermont Street dates to 1869 and was added to the National Register in 1991. The surrounding neighborhood, once the heart of downtown Indianapolis's African American community, significantly changed with post-World War II urban development that included new hotels, apartments, office space, museums, and the Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis campus. In 2016 the congregation sold their deteriorating church, which was repurposed into part of a new hotel. The congregation built a new worship center at 6417 Zionsville Road in Pike Township in northwest Indianapolis.
The Bethel AME congregation has a long history of supporting the city's African American community. It is especially noted for its activities on behalf of the antislavery movement in the years before the American Civil War; its support of the Underground Railroad, which provided protection to slaves en route to Canada; and its commitment to education and community outreach. Bethel also served as the mother church to several AME congregations in Indiana and as a public meeting place in Indianapolis for social activists. Local chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Indiana State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs were organized at the Vermont Street church in the early 1900s.
History Indianapolis became home to several African Methodist Episcopal Church congregations, but Bethel is the city's oldest African American congregation. Originally established in 1836 and known as Indianapolis Station, it had adopted the name of Bethel AME Church by 1869.Michelle D. Hale, "Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church," in
Origins Augustus Turner, a local barber, organized a small group of African American Methodists in 1836. The congregation's first meetings were held in Turner's log cabin on Georgia Street. A new house of worship was constructed on Georgia Street in 1841. When the congregation sought affiliation with the African Methodist Episcopal Church, William Paul Quinn, an AME circuit rider from Cincinnati, Ohio, who later became an AME bishop, was the first AME minister to serve the Indianapolis Station. Quinn also helped it achieve membership in the AME Church's Western Circuit. Elisha Weaver began serving as the church's first full-time minister in 1850. The congregation adopted the name of Bethel AME Church in the late 1860s. Although the congregation continued to expand into larger buildings and extend its outreach programs to the area's African American community, it faced financial challenges throughout its early history.
Georgia Street church In 1841 the congregation had its first church built on Georgia Street between the Central Canal and Mississippi Street (present-day Senate Avenue). The Bethel AME congregation continued to use the small, frame structure until 1857, when it bought the first Christ Church building from the city's Episcopal congregation. (The Episcopal parishioners had decided to replace their wood-frame church with a new stone structure on its site on Monument Circle.) The AME congregation had the small church moved to their site on Georgia Street; however, the church was destroyed by fire in 1862.Most secondary sources report that the fire destroyed the AME congregation's Georgia Street church in 1862; however, Warren, p. 33, says it occurred in July 1864.The Christ Church building that the Bethel AME congregation purchased in 1857 was constructed on the Circle in 1838. The Gothic Revival-style structure was painted white and measured by . It had a total seating capacity of 350 people. See Bodenhamer and Barrows, eds., p. 413. See also: See also: It is believed that the AME congregation's open support of the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad, which provided protection to slaves en route to Canada, may have led some pro-slavery advocates to burn the church. The congregation raised funds and had the frame church rebuilt in 1867. The replacement structure served the congregation until its brick church on West Vermont Street was built in 1868–69. The congregation sold a lot it owned at the corner of Michigan and Tennessee Streets (present-day Capitol Avenue) for $3,000 and used the funds to purchase another lot for $5,000 on West Vermont Street that served as the site for the new church.
Vermont Street church
The church's West Vermont Street site, located in the northwest section of downtown Indianapolis, has historically been the heart of the African American community. The neighborhood included a mix of residential, retail, commercial, and light industry. In 1867 the congregation contracted with Adam Busch to build a new brick church on its West Vermont Street lot. The church was supposed to have cost $10,400. By 1869, when the building was only partially completed, the congregation moved into the new church at 414 West Vermont Street and adopted the name of Bethel AME Church. Bethel congregation sold or mortgaged other property it owned to complete construction of the church. The church was sold on July 24, 1880, to pay off its debts, but its new owner allowed the congregation to repurchase the property in 1891 when sufficient funds had been raised to pay off a mortgage. Subsequent mortgages on the church were paid off in 1944, 1961, and 1982.Warren, pp. 34–35.
Post-World War II development and the declining nearby neighborhood caused the area to change, but the Bethel AME congregation remained in its aging church, which was renovated in 1974 in order to make more space for outreach activities. Eventually, urban development dominated the surrounding area, which included hotels, apartments, museums, and office space along the Central Canal to the east, north, and south. The sprawling IUPUI campus was established west of the church.
Bethel AME Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991; at that time it was the only African-American church building in Indianapolis to receive that recognition. The state historical marker for Bethel AME Church, which is located across from the building on West Vermont Street, was dedicated on June 20, 2009, to commemorate the site that Indianapolis's oldest African-American church had occupied since 1869.
Sale and redevelopment
In 2015 the Bethel AME congregation initiated a capital campaign to raise the $2 million to $3 million needed to repair the deteriorating building, but it proved to be unsuccessful. Without the major funding needed to proceed with the church repairs, the congregation began considering offers to buy the Vermont Street property. In early 2016 the congregation reached an agreement with Sun Development and Management Corporation, an Indianapolis-based developer, to sell the property for an undisclosed amount and relocate. Sun Development, who agreed to preserve as much of the structure as possible, planned to build a hotel on the property. Under the terms of the sale, the congregation had to vacate the property by August 2016. See also:
In February 2017 Indiana University announced that its School of Informatics and Computing at IUPUI had received a grant from the university to create a three-dimensional virtual reality model of the historic Vermont Street church. IUPUI students collected 3,000 images for use in the modeling project. When completed, the model will be accessible to the public through IUPUI's School of Informatics and Computing. Digital images used to create the model will be housed at the IUPUI Library; the digitized archive, along with other archival records from the church, will be held in collection of the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis.
In 2018, the congregation' opened a new church building on Zionsville Road in Pike Township in northwest Indianapolis.
A seven-story hotel with 231 rooms opened on the site in December 2021. It is co-branded as Hampton Inn and Homewood Suites and includes a swimming pool, rooftop patio, and other amenity spaces.
Building description The Vermont Street site originally consisted of a three-story church and an adjacent two-story parsonage that connected to the main building by an enclosed passageway. The church and parsonage date from 1867 to 1869; the parsonage was converted to a church office at a later date. The church's four-story tower, east gable, and west cross gable were added as part of a major renovation to the church in 1894. A false façade of metal framework and stucco was added to the church's and parsonage's south façade in 1973–74. The church's original brick façade and its main entrance was partially obscured by the 1974 update; however, the building retained many features dating to its construction in 1869 and the renovation in 1894.
Exterior and plan The three-story church and its square, four-story tower were constructed of red brick over a limestone foundation and contained some Romanesque Revival features. Only the northeast corner of the tower was attached to the church. The tower had paired windows on the second story, multiple round arches above the third-floor windows, and a round arch flanked by pairs of pilasters at the fourth-story level. The tower's hip roof was topped with a cross finial.
The church's main entrance, facing south toward Vermont Street, had a false façade of stucco that included a single arch over the main entrance and two narrow arches on either side.The church's original south façade, now covered, had three openings on its upper and lower portions. The main entrance had a large, round arch. A gabled dormer with a large, round arched window was centered above the entry; however, it was removed as part of the 1973 alteration to the south façade. See The church's east elevation, partially obscured by the adjacent parsonage, had a cross-gabled section with tall, round-arched windows and two-story arched windows that divided into two lancets at the second-story level. The church's west elevation had vertically aligned window openings and one doorway on the south. (Another door on the north of this elevation was enclosed.) The west elevation's second and third stories each had five, round-arched windows; its cross gable had a lunette window. The north (rear) elevation had a gabled section with two arched windows on the first story, one round-arched window on the second story, and two round-arched windows on the third floor. A hip-roofed section at the rear had an arched doorway and a window on the ground floor with a two-story arched window that divided into two round-arched lancet windows above. The rear elevation also had an exterior chimney.
An adjacent, two-story parsonage east of the church was erected at the time of the church's initial construction (1867–69). The red brick parsonage connected to the church on the first and second floor and was later converted to a church office. Its gable front (the main façade facing Vermont Street) was covered with a false façade in 1974. Openings in the south façade were blocked in, probably when the false façade was added. A gable-roof porch covered the parsonage's main entry. Originally, the south elevation had arched openings with a door and two windows on the first floor and three windows on the second floor. The east elevation had a two-story gabled main section and a shed-roofed section in the rear. The main section had two windows on the first floor, one on the second; the shed-roof section had one window.
Interior