Here is information about the Holly Grove Presbyterian Church from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. It accompanies the church's listing on the National Register of Historic Places web site:


HOLLY GROVE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, HOLLY GROVE, MONROE COUNTY

SUMMARY

The Holly Grove Presbyterian Church is architecturally significant as an unusual vernacular example of an ecclesiastical design that blends the Greek Revival style with the Gothic Revival style. The building's resemblance to its c. 1900 appearance, when the weatherboard was placed over the original board-and-batten, has not been compromised by the addition of steel siding, as the height and profile of the original weatherboard and trim has been duplicated.

ELABORATION

The first Presbyterian congregation in the vicinity of Holly Grove was established in 1839, when Reverend Jordan B. Lambert emigrated from Tennessee and settled approximately one-and-one-half miles south of the present site of Holly Grove. The first building erected to house the new congregation that formed around Rev. Lambert was erected in 1867 and called the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Probably a wood frame structure, it contained a gallery at the back to allow former slaves to worship also. This structure burned on Christmas Eve of 1871 due to a fire that was started by burning candles on a Christmas tree; however, the adjoining Macedonia Cemetery continued to be used, and remains active today.

In the spring of 1881, Reverend F. Patton of Helena, Arkansas petitioned the Arkansas Synod for permission to erect a new church building on Lot 115 in the town of Holly Grove. Permission was granted and the new church building was erected during the summer and fall of 1881. Oral tradition maintains that the lumber for the building was donated and milled at a local sawmill owned by one of the church elders; legend also has it that the labor was donated by some of the male members of the church (a c. 1901 manse was also erected on the lots to the east of the church, but this was removed in 1962 to make way for a modern brick, ranch-style manse).

The design of the Holly Grove Presbyterian Church is an unusual combination of two diametrically- opposed architectural styles. Though the main, sanctuary section of the structure is clearly Greek Revival in influence, with its Classical gable returns, overall symmetry, and stark, clean lines, the attachment of the square, projecting corner tower to the southeast corner is a clear Gothic Revival reference. As such it reflects the pervasive influence of the associations with Christian ecclesiastical architecture taken on by the Gothic Revival style that spread throughout the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Begun in England by such architects as A.N.W Pugin, various English religious organizations associated with the Anglican (Episcopalian) church soon actively embraced the Gothic Revival as the only proper style for any "true" Christian architecture, to the exclusion of all others. Naturally, this notion took somewhat longer to take hold in a country where religious meeting houses had bee Classical for well over one hundred years, the Palladian- influenced Georgian and Federal styles of the mid- to late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries having been followed by the stoic horizontality and weight of the Greek Revival. However, such trained American architects as Richard Upjohn (the designer of Trinity Church on Wall Street in New York City) and such less erudite, eclectic architects as Minard Lefever designed in this idiom before the Civil War, and the full weight of its influence was certainly felt thereafter. The rise in popularity of the High Victorian Gothic (used primarily for large, public commissions) and the Queen Anne Revival (used primarily for residences) only improved the atmosphere of acceptance for the Gothic Revival.

In Arkansas, however, the appearance in 1881 of this influence, even in as timid a form as seen here, is quite early: such other well-known examples of this style as the Cane Hill Presbyterian Church in Cane Hill, Washington County (NR-listed 11/17/82) were not constructed until 1891, then years later. The appearance of this style in Holly Grove bears testimony to the influence of the arrival of the Arkansas Central Railroad (running between Clarendon and Helena, the original company defaulted on its interest payments and was reorganized in 1877 as the Arkansas Midland Railroad) here in 1872. As was the case in many such Arkansas communities, the railroad served as the link to the fashions and fancies of the outside world, and this was no less true for architecture. Thus the Holly Grove Presbyterian Church survives as both an early and unusual example of this incipient transition in American taste.

The congregation of the Holly Grove Presbyterian Church has remained active throughout the twentieth century, though like many churches in towns that owed much of their prosperity to a railroad that no longer serves the community, the congregation's numbers have dwindled somewhat in the past few decades. However, they have remained loyal to this building and have taken good care of it since it was constructed. It is in excellent physical condition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Davidson, Mrs. Glenda, History of Holly Grove Presbyterian Church, typed manuscript, unpaginated.

Goodspeed's Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Eastern Arkansas, (1889), p. 514.

Hull, Clifton E., Shortline Railroads of Arkansas, (Norman, Oklahoma; 1969), p. 337.

King, Mrs. Katie, Correspondence to Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, 6/25/79.

Stanton, Phoebe B., The Gothic Revival and American Church Architecture, (Baltimore; 1968), pp. 3-91, passim.