<\/p>\n
A historic church\u2019s white concrete edifice stands smack in the heart of the Riverside community, a bit weathered after 99 years.<\/p>\n
Six steps at Riverside Church at Park and King<\/a> lead to a main door with carved crosses under an archway bearing a bas-relief of Christ. But the door shows its age, as do stained concrete walls on parts of the huge sanctuary.<\/p>\n Some wood-framed windows also display signs of leaks.<\/p>\n But the church has new hope. The church just received a $359,534 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation<\/a> to restore the church\u2019s interior and exterior, the Rev. Adam Gray<\/a> says.<\/p>\n The money is part of the trust\u2019s annual Fund for Sacred Places and Partners for Sacred Places<\/a> programs, which awarded a total of $8.73 million this year to historic and architecturally significant faith communities across the country.<\/p>\n Riverside Church at Park and King was the only Florida sanctuary to receive one of 30 grants nationwide. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really encouraging because we know we have something really wonderful here at the corner of Park and King,\u201d Gray said. \u201cThis sanctuary designed by Addison Mizner is one of a kind \u2014 there is nothing like it anywhere in the world. It is a National Registry of Historic Places landmark. It is a beautiful sanctuary, and to have this national committee look at us and say we see as much value here as you do is a huge boon to us.\u201d<\/p>\n Riverside Church now becomes one of 168 congregations nationwide to receive over $33 million since Partners for Sacred Places was founded in 2016.<\/p>\n \u201cThese sacred places are not only architectural treasures \u2014 they are vital centers of congregational life and community anchors offering meals, education, cultural enrichment and refuge,\u201d organization President Bob Jaeger said in a news release about the grant. \u201cWe are honored to support their preservation and their continued role in public life.\u201d <\/p>\n The trust\u2019s president and CEO, Carol Quillen, said: \u201cSacred places hold a profound role in the American landscape, embodying both heritage and hope. Through the National Fund for Sacred Places, we are ensuring these spaces remain vibrant hubs of community life, sustaining connection, creativity and service for generations to come.\u201d <\/p>\n Needs at the Riverside church<\/p>\n Riverside Church at Park and King was built in 1926. Mizner came up with a 1\u00bd-story design with an octagonal dome and red tile roof and imported blue Italian glass windows around it. The sanctuary was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.<\/p>\n What looks like stone inside and outside is actually 4 inches of concrete mortar laid atop its solid brick core, then intricately carved.<\/p>\n Now cracked in places and stained with age, the facade needs to be resealed and repainted, Gray said. The big cypress doors, each with carved Greek crosses in their fascias, also show some deterioration.<\/p>\n \u201cThe wooden pieces and some of the connections around the roof were not built to last forever, and so a lot of this restoration that we are doing is all wooden-framed windows \u2014 all of the places where the different sections of the roof connect together so they stop leaking,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The main altar is under a great stone archway, framing part of the sanctuary\u2019s pipe organ array behind the pulpit. More pipes from the Skinner 7-Rank organ line the choir loft behind, part of what Gray says is the largest church organ in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n Around the interior, an ornate chandelier, plus star-shaped lanterns representing the Star of Bethlehem, were specially made for the church. Flooring tiles underfoot were recovered from a 15th century Spanish cathedral.<\/p>\n \u201cMizner wanted it all to feel as authentic as possible, so he went to the Spanish government and the Catholic Church and asked for permission to recover this tile from a ruined cathedral,\u201d Gray said. \u201cSo the floor we are standing on is 500 years old. Even though the church is only 100 years old, we are even more rooted in the history.\u201d<\/p>\n The stone walls inside look ancient, but they were artificially aged at Mizner\u2019s request, simulating cypress-beamed ceilings with now-faded painted decorations that look like 15th-century Italian Renaissance designs.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will restore the paint work that is done under the rafters and beams,\u201d Gray said, pointing upward at one decoration near the entrance. \u201cSome of the stuff that does fade with time, we will put it all back to the way it was in 1926.\u201d<\/p>\n Gray said the church has really \u201ccemented our identity around being a servant and hub for our community\u201d with theater groups, home school co-ops and town meetings in recent years<\/p>\n The grant will become the core of an effort to secure matching funds to focus on the church\u2019s needs so the future can be assured, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn another 100 years, we will be able to hand the baton to yet another generation that carries forward the light of hope in our community,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n The promise of the grant, however, came as a more nefarious act<\/a> struck the church this week.<\/p>\n On Sunday, someone tore down the Pride flag that had been next to the church\u2019s main sign at the corner of Park and King streets, splashing it with red paint, then staking it to the ground with a cross.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are so many people right now who see the cross as a symbol of rejection, as a symbol of hate,\u201d Gray said. \u201cBut we believe that the cross is a symbol of unification, a symbol of inclusion that what happened on the cross is all of human violence, all of human hatred, coming to God, and God turned it into resurrection.\u201d<\/p>\n On Monday, the church replaced the damaged flag with two larger Pride flags flanking the main sign \u2014 \u201cbecause hatred has no place in Jacksonville, and we are a people of hope,\u201d Gray said.<\/p>\n The post Historic Riverside church gets answer to renovation prayer<\/a> appeared first on Jacksonville Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A historic church\u2019s white concrete edifice stands smack in the heart of the Riverside community, a bit weathered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[749,14228,116,118,117,14229,266,748],"class_list":["post-16916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-breaking-news","tag-historic-riverside-church-gets-answer-to-renovation-prayer","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jacksonville-today","tag-local-news","tag-newsbreak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The 99-year-old Riverside Church at Park and King received a $359,534 grant for much-needed renovations. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today<\/p>\n
The Park Street side of the Riverside Church and Park and King shows some deterioration of its cedar side door and staining of its concrete walls. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today<\/p>\n
Paint work is shown under the rafters and beams at Riverside Church at Park and King. | Dan Scanlan, Jacksonville Today<\/p>\n
Someone tore down the Pride flag at Riverside Church at Park and King\u2019s and tacked it to the ground with a wooden cross on Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025. | Riverside Church at Park and KingStriving for unity<\/p>\n