Keeping history alive
The Carraway-Davie House is built with pieces of Birmingham’s history.
The brick from the walls of the Birmingham Paper Company and columns from Talladega’s Presbyterian Female Collegiate Institute complete its exterior. On the inside, the house is fitted with historical fixtures such as a mirror from the original Tutwiler Hotel, marble and iron from the Birmingham Terminal train station, and a chandelier from the Temple Theatre.
Originally built in 1972 for local surgeon Dr. Clayton Davie, the house on Old Overton Road was donated to Carraway Methodist Medical Center and has since been used as a place for community meetings and celebrations. In June, Cahaba Park Church purchased the property from Corretti Inc., beginning a new chapter for the house.
Senior Pastor Murray Lee wants to keep the doors open as a place to commune and celebrate.
“The last thing that we want is to say, ‘Well, the church has bought the Carraway-Davie House, and that means the gates are closed,’” Lee said. “We want to be a place that serves the community.”
A group of families came together in 2007 to form Cahaba Park Church as a branch of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Homewood. Since its inception, services have been held at Mountain Brook High School. After seven years, the church has grown to 550 members and has outgrown the space.
“We’ve got over 20 zip codes… it’s been neat to see folks coming from different parts of the city,” Lee said. “Instead of a community church, you have a much broader sense of what’s going on.”
When Lee and the church realized the space potential of the Carraway-Davie House, they knew that it was the place for them. They looked at other locations during their search over the years, but nothing else compared, Lee said. In order to raise funds to purchase the building, the church launched a capital campaign in January 2013 titled “For Every Generation.” The campaign focused on the importance of having a place to call home.
“On a day-in-day-out basis, we have a church home,” church member Katie Caldwell said. “We want to plant [other] churches not just locally, but internationally.… That will take shape now that we have a central location.”
In total, the purchase of the building cost $4.65 million, and renovations will cost another $500,000 to $800,000. Renovations have begun and church offices have moved to the lowest level of the house, but they do not expect to hold services at the site until mid-2015.
A conference center located behind the property will serve as Cahaba Park’s worship center. In terms of renovations, the church plans to connect the house with the conference center to create one building. The rooms in the original house will be used as classrooms and meeting spaces. All the space is, of course, located in the area the church has called home since its start.
“Mountain Brook has been so wonderful to work with over the years,” Lee said. “But we felt like having a church home that we could call our own, that we could use to serve the community, would be important.”
For more information on Cahaba Park Church and the Carraway-Davie House, visit cahabapark.org.