People driving down Highway 67 in Priceville can’t help noticing the towering new building on the hill. It’s the latest addition for Point Mallard Parkway Baptist Church, finished earlier this year. Right behind it sits the auditorium, built in 1962.
Attached to the auditorium, beneath a brick facade, is a much older building, constructed in 1887 and remodeled in the 1940s and again in the mid-1960s.
Harold Atchley, life-long member at Point Mallard, helped on the 40s remodel. He recently reminisced about the contrast between the older buildings and the new.
“We moved over to the south side of the building and dug a basement. We dug it by hand, and used mules and a flip-scraper. We took the men who had tractors at the church and pulled the building over the basement. It’s still there today.”
Later, according to Atchley, “We built the educational building over that. There are some hand-hewed logs still in there.”
When the “new” auditorium was built in 1962, Atchley was a member of the building committee. He said the church decided to engage a local contractor to construct the building. “Mr. Walter Griffith was a well-known carpenter in this area, and he had just finished one phase of Hartselle Hospital.”
On the appointed day, the contractor met with the pastor and some members of the building committee.
At this point, most modern contractors would require a multi-page blueprint with drawings for electric, plumbing and heating/cooling systems, as well as detailed views of the proposed building from different angles. They would line up subcontractors for plumbing and wiring.
Neither Griffith nor the representatives of the church had blueprints prepared, and neither party expected them. The contractor asked Atchley and the pastor questions about how they wanted the building laid out.
After a few minutes of conversation, the contractor reached into his pickup and pulled out a brown paper bag that had contained his lunch earlier in the day. Carefully smoothing it out, he took a stubby pencil from a pocket in the bib of his overalls and drew a diagram.
When the drawing met the approval of the pastor and committee members, Griffith folded the bag back up, put it in the truck and left. Every day, Atchley said, Griffith pulled out the paper bag “blueprint,” smoothed it out and put his crew to work. When it came to plumbing and wiring, Atchley said, “Mr. Griffith, being the kind of contractor he was, did it all.”
Jeno Shirey was the chair of the space utilization committee for the newest building, completed this year. The process he described was much different from the 1962 version.
The church had purchased some adjacent property, which gave them access to Highway 67, now a busy four-lane.
When the church began talking about a new building this time, Shirey said they contacted the Church Architecture Department at LifeWay Church Resources. “One of their engineers came by and looked over our land. He gave us some ideas on how we could use our existing property,” he said.
The blueprint for the new building was more complicated than the brown paper bag. It was a full blueprint, but still a bit abbreviated.
“We did a vision — we outlined where we saw the church in five years, 10 years — and that guided our ideas about how much room we needed,” said Shirey. “We used some of the guidelines from the architecture group in Nashville.”
The earlier building stood alone on a hill above a two-lane road. The only buildings nearby were a few scattered homes.
By the time the newest building was constructed, it faced a busy four-lane highway on one side and a small strip mall on another. The changes in the area affected the design of the building.
Pastor Charles Smith noted, “We wanted a modern look to the building. We went with stucco to make it blend in with the shopping center across the road.”
Even the utilization of space is different. The new building has a kitchen, Sunday School rooms and a large multi-purpose space.
In addition to the traditional congregational meals and wedding receptions, the building is used for women’s ministry‚ Bible study, some worship services and a recent lunch held for the local schools.
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