On your left, look for the big, pale-brick church with a classic Greek-temple look: a row of tall white columns holding up a wide triangular pediment, with a small greenish dome peeking above the roofline.
This is First Presbyterian Church, and it’s kind of the original “we should probably organize ourselves” congregation of Chattanooga. It officially formed on June 21, 1840… which, in city terms, is basically the early draft version of Chattanooga. What’s especially striking is who helped get it going: missionaries who had worked at the Brainerd Mission to the Cherokee. After the Trail of Tears tore people from their homes, those missionaries returned and started ministry here among the English, Scots-Irish, and Welsh families who were building a new town. That’s a lot of heavy history behind what now looks like calm stone and straight lines.
Early on, worship happened in a log cabin. Not exactly the columned front you’re looking at now. In 1845 they built their first real church, then outgrew it and moved again in the 1850s to a brick building downtown. Then the Civil War hit Chattanooga hard. During the Union occupation in 1863, their church was stripped and used as a military hospital. Imagine showing up for Sunday service and finding your sanctuary turned into triage… the kind of reality check history likes to hand out. After the war, for a while, they met in the minister’s home-faith, but make it practical.
This building came later, in 1910, designed by Stanford White, a heavyweight architect with a flair for grand statements. It cost $152,000 at the time-roughly about $5 million in today’s money-and honestly, it looks like they spent it on columns you could lean a whole city against. It earned a National Register listing in 2009.
One more fun twist: in the 1920s, their minister Joseph Glass Venable started preaching on local radio-launching what the church believes is the longest continuously running radio program in the entire country. Not bad for a group that began in a log cabin.
When you’re set, McKenzie Arena is a 9-minute walk heading northwest.
