Mt. Zion Presbyterian Church
National Register Listing
Street Address:
SC Hwy 154 (St. Charles Rd), Bishopville, SC City Vicinity (Lee County)
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817731014
Description and Narrative:
This Neo-Classical building, constructed in 1911, is an excellent and unusual example of an early twentieth century sanctuary in rural eastern South Carolina and one of the many designs by the architectural firm of Wilson & Sompayrac of Columbia, the most successful firm in the state during the first two decades of the century. Its principals were Charles Coker Wilson and Edwin Douglas Sompayrac. The present sanctuary is the fourth to serve this congregation. The church is a linear gable-front, temple-form, two-story brick building laid in Flemish bond with an eastern oriented façade. Set upon a raised brick foundation surmounted by a soldier course water table, the building’s most imposing feature is its tetrastyle portico featuring a full-width masonry stair with cheek walls and monumental limestone columns and pilasters of the Ionic order. The portico’s pediment, as well as the building’s surrounding entablature, is embellished with modillions. The sanctuary contains walls and ceiling finished in smooth plaster with monumental Doric order pilasters accentuating the wall surfaces between the large Palladian windows, at each corner and to either side of the arched overflow and balconied alcove at the west end of the room. Directly to the rear of the church building is a small, one-story lateral-gabled frame building, constructed in 1851 as Mt. Zion’s Session House. The nominated acreage also contains a large cemetery containing graves of church members dating from ca. 1830 to the present. Listed in the National Register July 17, 2003.
Period of Significance:
1830;1851;1911
Level of Significance:
Local
Area of Significance:
Architecture
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
July 17 2003
