Built in 1915, the O’Hanlon Building was designed by Winston-Salem’s own Willard C. Northup. It was the tallest building in North Carolina when it opened, narrowly edging out the Wachovia Bank and Trust Company Building, until in turn being edged out by the Wachovia Bank and Trust Company Building when the latter added a ninth floor.
First Presbyterian is an empire with multiple buildings on a large campus downtown. The main sanctuary, above, was built in 1971. It has a commanding position and makes the most of it; old Pa Pitt had to stand in the middle of Third Street to get this picture of it. Although the church is in a striking modernist style, it harmonizes so well with the older Gothic Sunday school and fellowship hall behind it that it is hard to tell where the older leaves off and the newer begins.
At night a lighted cross hovers in the front window.
The main church and the buildings behind it are collectively described as Building A. Building B, in an uncompromisingly rectangular modernist style, was getting some renovation and probably expansion when Father Pitt visited.
Blum seemed to handle all the construction in downtown Winston, of which there was quite a lot when Father Pitt was walking around.
Building C, a postmodernist construction that tries to emulate the materials of Building A, includes the Worship Center, where the “modern” services are held on Sunday mornings.
