Falls Church

About this property

The Falls Church is an Episcopal church in the United States in its namesake city of Falls Church, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. Established in 1732, the church is a brick building which was built in 1769 and still remains in use. The forerunner to the Falls Church appears to have been founded by landowner William Gunnell, who had moved from Westmoreland County, Virginia, in 1729. In early 1730, he secured a cleric and convened a congregation which met in his home until 1733 when the first building was constructed. Until that time, the area was served by a cleric who lived near present-day Quantico, and the nearest church was Pohick Church near Lorton. Known as "William Gunnell's Church", the new wooden structure was designed and built by Colonel Richard Blackburn, who was directed to construct a weatherboarded building forty feet by twenty-two feet, with a 13:12 pitch roof, and with interior work modeled on that of Pohick Church; the cost was 33,500 pounds of tobacco. Like Pohick Church, the new church served Truro Parish, which had been established by the colonial Virginia Assembly in May 1732 for the land north of the Occoquan River; Truro's first vestry met in November 1732. Michael Reagan allowed the church to be built on his land but failed to grant the deed. John Trammell later bought the land and, in 1746, sold the two-acre lot, including the church, the churchyard, and a spring, to the vestry of Truro Parish. By this point, it was known as the Upper Church. The Vestry Book first referred to it as the "Falls Church" on November 28, 1757, owing to its location at the intersection of the road to the Little Falls of the Potomac River (upstream of the Chain Bridge) and the Middle Turnpike (leading from Alexandria to Leesburg, now Virginia Route 7 or Leesburg Pike, called West Broad Street in downtown Falls Church City). George Mason was elected vestryman in 1748, as was George Washington in 1762. By 1762, the wood building had fallen into decay and the vestry ordered a new brick building to be constructed on the same site. The next year, George Washington and George William Fairfax, as church wardens, assumed responsibility to contract for the new building. After 1765, this church became the seat of the new Fairfax Parish. The new church was designed by Colonel James Wren, a member of the vestry. Work commenced in 1767 and completed in late fall 1769. Wren, a slaveowner, used enslaved people to do the work. The Wren building remains on the site, between S. Washington, E. Broad, and E. Fairfax Streets. The 1769 structure is the oldest remaining church building north of Quantico in Virginia and is one of the oldest church structures in the United States.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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