Sunday, January 11, 2026, 2–3pm | Free for Members or included with Museum admission
As congregations shrink and buildings age, there is more uncertainty than ever around the future of our historic churches. Stewards are now tasked with finding creative ways to preserve these architecturally, historically, and culturally important places for generations to come.
Join us for a panel discussion with preservationists from the First Baptist Church, Hopkins Chapel, and the Basilica of St. Lawrence, moderated by Jessie Landl, director of the Asheville Preservation Society.
In 1868, the African American members of Asheville’s Central United Methodist Church formed their own congregation, Hopkins Chapel African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Zion Church. After their chapel burned down in 1907, the community commissioned Richard Sharp Smith to design a new church, meeting in the Smith-designed YMI building while construction was underway. Smith’s Gothic Revival building was one of only four churches constructed by James Vester Miller, a Black master brick mason and contractor for the project.
This panel is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Lasting Legacies: Architecture in Asheville by Richard Sharp Smith, Albert Heath Carrier, and Douglas D. Ellington Supported by the Ellington Family and in part by a grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities, Bruce E. Johnson & Leigh Ann Hamon, and Jim Wilson & Lynne Poirier-Wilson.