Walking along Greene Street, with its long line of monuments, memorials, and those quiet pockets of shade that make Augusta's historic core feel so lived‑in, it's almost impossible not to be pulled toward the First Christian Church. The red brick, the tall white steeple, the way the building anchors the corner at Seventh and Greene. It all has that unmistakable presence of a congregation that has shaped the city for nearly two centuries. The historical marker out front gives you the essentials, but the deeper story adds even more texture to what you see when you stand there.
The current sanctuary, completed in 1875, reflects a blend of Romanesque Revival and Gothic Revival architecture, a combination that gives the building its distinctive profile. The soaring 168‑foot steeple still rises above the surrounding blocks. Even after a fire destroyed the earlier sanctuary in 1870, parts of that structure were incorporated into the new building, a quiet architectural continuity that ties the modern church to its nineteenth‑century roots. Restoration work began in 1989, part of a long effort to preserve both the building and the congregation's place in Augusta's civic landscape.
The marker reads, "The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) began in Kentucky in the early years of the nineteenth century. Dr. Daniel Hook and Captain and Mrs. Edward Campfield established Augusta's First Christian Church in 1835, despite great suspicion and negativity from more established Protestant denominations. Philanthropist Emily Tubman aided the fledgling congregation by donating the first building (later Tubman High School for girls), convincing Georgia lawyer James S. Lamar to study and to become the church's pastor in 1852, and donating new buildings for the church's relocation to Greene and McIntosh Streets in 1874. Restoration of the structure began in 1989."
It is marker number 121-9 and it was erected in 2005 by the Georgia Historical Society and the Congregation of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
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