038. Basilica St. Mary Star of the Sea
Historic Marker Number 38 is located at 1010 Windsor Lane on the corner of Truman Avenue.During the early missionary years of Florida as a Spanish Territory, the island of Key West began its spiritual journey under the auspices of Spanish Jesuits that attempted to establish a permanent mission on the Island. There are indications that it might have been established as a parish as early as 1724, staffed by a Cuban priest. However, the unpredictable nature of the Key’s Indians and the lack of government protection against English raiders from the Carolinas, forced the missionaries to return to Cuba in 1727. In 1743, two Italian Jesuit priest-explorers came from Havana and opened a mission chapel for Indians in Key West. Unable to protect them, the Spanish governor again ordered them to return to Cuba.The first Catholic Church on the island was dedicated on the February 26, 1852. It was the fifth Catholic Church erected in all of Florida and the first in South Florida. With the boundaries of the parish being bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other, the dedicated title of ‘St. Mary, Star of the Sea’ was a perfect choice. ‘Since it first shed its light in Key West, it has like a star of the sea to the wandering mariner, been a star of hope and comfort in times of despair and sorrow, and a star of joy to those who have lived in its teachings.’This first church was destroyed by a fire in 1901. The present church was built in 1905 with an exterior design that represents the eclectic period of American Victorian Architecture and is reminiscent of a modified early renaissance revival building with rusticated exterior walls, round arches, and lunettes filled with transitional gothic arches, louvered shutters and colored glass windows. Many interior elements have both Romanesque and early Renaissance characteristics. Please step inside to view its most striking feature, the stained-glass window behind the altar depicting the church Patroness, St. Mary, Star of the Sea.
055. United Methodist Church
Historic Marker Number 55 is located at 600 Eaton Street at the corner of Simonton and Elizabeth streets.The act of settling a small coral island with limited resources situated between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean took a strong belief in oneself and sense of a greater power watching over your life. The island’s unique melting pot is made up of the descendants of shipwreck survivors, Cuban expatriates, fishermen, wreckers, spongers, soldiers, pirates, cigar rollers, sailors, Bahamians and a wide array of people looking to reinvent themselves. Yellow fever epidemics, disastrous fires, powerful hurricanes and storms and government bankruptcy challenged the great success of Key West from the Civil War until the Great Depression in the 1930s. The one constant for the community was their strength of faith.Ten years after the founding of the city, two traveling Methodist preachers arrived by schooner in 1832. For the next twelve years the gathering spot for worship was a simple meeting in the home of Samuel Kemp, a Bahamian Methodist lay person. The first Methodist Episcopal Church South was formed in 1845 making the Old Stone Church the oldest Methodist church in South Florida.However, that is just part of the story. The current limestone church structure is the fourth building that has housed this congregation. The first church building was a wooden structure on the corner of Eaton and William Streets. The second church structure stood in the 600 block of Caroline Street. The third worship hall was a wooden structure built in 1846 on today’s site that was subsequently destroyed by the Great Havana Hurricane of 1846 (See Historic Marker #40).Shortly after, the congregation built a small temporary wooden worship hall and began planning for a substantial structure that could withstand natural disasters and the wrath of Mother Nature. By 1870, William Kerr, a noted builder and architect who first came to Key West as a member of the Union Army to help construct local forts, was commissioned to design and build the new church. It took fifteen years from 1877 through 1892 to build the current structure.The new building was significantly larger than the wooden worship hall it was replacing. The coral stone was quarried from the church grounds with the foundation and walls erected around the wooden building. When Kerr installed the roof in 1884, the earlier wooden worship hall was dismantled and carried out the front door. The Old Stone Church was completed in 1892.
092. St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Historic Marker Number 92 is located at 401 Duval Street on the corner of Eaton Street.This grand structure stands as a testament to the faith, productivity, and tenacity of Key West's diverse community. The building you see before you is the fourth church structure built by St. Paul's parishioners within an 80-year period between the 1800s and early 1900s.In 1831, a mere nine years after the founding of Key West in 1822, St. Paul's church was formed by an official act of the Key West City Council. A signed petition was sent to the Episcopalian Bishop of New York requesting a priest be sent to the island and the Parish of St. Paul's be established.The first church rector, Reverend Sanson K. Brunot, arrived December 23, 1832, and held the parish's first service was held Christmas Day in the County Courthouse in Jackson Square. Since there was no church building or rectory, Brunot became a permanent houseguest of William Whitehead, one of the four founding fathers of Key West.Land for the church and rectory was given by Mary Fleming, the widow of John W. C. Fleming in 1832. Mr. Fleming was another one of the island’s founding fathers who had intended to set up a sea salt manufacturing business. He died in 1832 at the relatively young age of 51. Mrs. Fleming donated the land for the church with the stipulation that her husband's remains stay where they were. He is still buried on the grounds, but the actual burial site is unknown.The original church, made of coral rock was completed in 1839. The devastating Havana Hurricane of 1846 destroyed the building. The storm ravaged the island sparing only six of 800 buildings.The second church on this site was a wooden structure completed in 1848. As the church prospered, a rectory was added in 1857. Reverend Osgood E. Herrick was the first in a long line of rectors to call it home. The Great Fire of 1886 destroyed the second church, but by some good fortune, the Rectory survived unharmed.Rebuilding the church began immediately and a third church structure was finished in 1887. This building, again constructed of wood, stood in the center of the block facing Eaton Street. In 1890, the church purchased its first bells. Once installed, the first chime of bells heard in the state of Florida rang out on Palm Sunday morning in 1891.In 1909, yet another disaster struck and the church was wrecked by a powerful hurricane. Luckily, rectory and the parish hall survived – the latter was temporarily used for services after the storm.After losing three churches to storms and fire, plans for a stormproof structure were approved in 1911. The fourth structure was built primarily of solid concrete with the building methods and materials being heavily influenced by the construction of Henry Flagler's Overseas Railway that was under construction at the same time.The new building was designed to face Duval Street and was completed in 1919 with the pipe organ arriving in 1931 for Christmas services.The church has an extensive collection of stained glass windows that were ordered and installed beginning in 1920. A unique design of the windows is that they were intended to pivot open to catch cool ocean breezes. Today the church stands as a beacon to the faith and fortitude of Key West's ancestors.
093. Cornish Memorial AME Zion Church
Historic Marker Number 93 is located at 704 Whitehead between Angela and Petronia streets.This historic site is as much about a nineteenth century Free Black community leader as it is about the landmark Cornish Memorial AME Zion Church in Key West. The Black community member was Sandy Cornish who founded the Cornish Chapel for the Black residents of Key West. It is thought that its first meeting was held under a large Spanish Lime tree in the 200 block of Hutcherson Lane in 1864.Sandy Cornish was born into slavery in 1793. By the time he founded the chapel, he had purchased his freedom, relocated to Key West with his wife, acquired land, became a wealthy farmer and a leading spirit among the island’s Black community.The church's existence is a culmination of a number of conditions and events that existed in Key West during the Civil War. The 1860 census counted 2,832 people living on the island. What the census did not show was the diversity of the population. It was a port city of considerable importance – economically and militarily – a fact that led to extensive heterogeneity in its residents. It was a diverse population that comprised shipwreck survivors, Bahamian wreckers, immigrants, fishermen from New England and the Gulf states, businessmen, commercial adventurers, mechanics from the Northern States, and world wanderers from every corner of the globe.Blacks comprised slightly less than 20 percent of the 1860s Key West population. The low percentage should not deceive as to the influence of, or living environment enjoyed by, the Black community. Given the town's geographic isolation and general lack of available laborers, conditions tended to offer a great deal of flexibility to slaves and the town's 160 Free Blacks.The Civil War era and the increased presence of the Federal Government brought prosperity to Key West, permitting local Blacks to capitalize on government spending indirectly as well as directly. During the war, the U.S. government stationed regiments of the U.S Colored Infantry, along with the 2nd U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment, and some men from the 99th Regiment, part of the United States ‘Corps d' Afrique’. The gathering of Black soldiers, local slaves, and free Blacks, greatly increased Key West's desire for spiritual leadership.Prior to and during the Civil War, the American Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ) in Hartford, Connecticut was striving to expand the geographic coverage of its ministries. In 1864, AMEZ leader Wilbur Garrison Strong was sent to Key West, the southernmost Union stronghold, to establish a church. Reverend Strong is recognized as the first ordained minister in Florida. Under the leadership of Reverend Strong, the Cornish Chapel congregation quickly outgrew the meetinghouse where they started. Plans for a grand centralized church building began in 1885.The church was constructed in the form of European cathedrals and was designed to serve as a place of worship, a schoolhouse and a gathering place of safety. With volunteer labor of the parishioners, stone was quarried from the site for the foundation and ground floor then craftsmen trained by ships’ carpenters mortised together great timbers with wooden pegs to build the superstructure The church's wood edifice and the arched wooden ceiling beams are believed to have been salvaged from sailing ships.
113. St. Stevens AME Zion Church
Historic Marker Number 113 is located at 330 Julia Street on the corner of Whitehead and Julia streets.St. Stephen AME Zion Church is one of a handful of African Methodist Episcopal churches in Bahama Village. It is named for Saint Stephen who is recognized as the first Christian martyr. He was tasked by the Apostles to distribute food and care to the poor of the early church. His beliefs and speeches concerning what he saw as injustices of the church’s distribution of wealth to its poor and widowed parishioners led to his death and martyrdom. He was condemned by the church and stoned to death. He is the patron saint of the poor and most interestingly, masons.The church structure is built from locally quarried limestone and coral rock. Parishioners, carpenters and members of the Black Mason’s Lodge, began church construction in 1900. They added the steeple to the structure in 1920. The exposed open beam and plank roof structure is evident when viewed from the interior of the structure.Key West has been tested by the Great Fire of 1886, numerous hurricanes and the ravages of a subtropical climate. Stone construction has proved to have many advantages of withstanding these dangers throughout the island’s 200 year history.It is a testament to the parishioners of Saint Stevens AME Zion Church that this is a stone structure surrounded by 3,000 wooden buildings that make up the largest wood vernacular Historic District in the United States.Saint Stephens was closed as a place of worship in 1979. Since then it has gone through a series of uses ranging from office space to residential use and is currently an art gallery open to the public.
094. Bethel AME Church
Historic Marker Number 94 is located at 223 Truman Avenue on the corner of Thomas Street.This structure is a building of faith and fortitude. The Bethel AME Church has been a religious, social and political center of Key West’s Black community. It is one of a handful of American Methodist Episcopal churches serving Bahama Village.This is the second location for the church. The original church building was founded in 1887 in the 700 block of Duval Street. That original wooden structure was demolished during the devastating Hurricane of 1909. The building was replaced the following year in the same location and the spiritual life of the congregation resumed as normal.The Bethel AME Church suffered a second loss in 1922 when the building was destroyed during a questionable daytime fire, some believing it was arson at the hand of the Ku Klux Klan. Historians contend that the fire may have been set on purpose as part of a nefarious business deal to convert the land by a developer for a more profitable use.In 1923, the congregation’s reconstruction began at the present location on the corner of Thomas Street and Truman Avenue. This white masonry hall of worship has been the proud home of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church members ever since.
