236 West Banner Avenue, City Park Church (former Schlatter Memorial Reformed Church), 1916

A brick gable-roofed Gothic Revival style church with a three-stage crenelated entrance tower on the diagonal at the corner and parapet gables with crenelation on the gable sides. The tower features a belfry with tall louvered vents and spaced lancet stained-glass windows. Granite steps lead to the tower’s double-leaf door, once embellished with oversized wrought-iron strap hinges, now replicas. The facade features granite detailing at the parapet, and granite window sills, lintels, and keystones. There is one large and two smaller Gothic arch stained-glass windows on the north and west elevations, and a rose window in the large front gable end facing Banner Avenue. Buttresses capped with granite flank the central bay of each elevation. The roof is slate.The congregation is currently removing Plexiglass installed over the windows in the 1970s, then repairing and painting each window frame.

The church was organized in 1914 and this lot purchased for $1,700. The Sunday school was organized in January, 1915 on the second floor of C. D. Couch's two-story frame grocery store at the corner of Acadia Avenue and Hollyrood Street, one block south (demolished). A nine member congregation was formalized later that year, then construction began in the fall with this structure completed in 1920. (The cornerstone date, however, is 1916).

The sanctuary ceiling was lowered and the original eastern choir loft expanded c. 1938, and in 1941, interior partitions and a second-story floor were added to the Sunday school portion of the building. The name Schlatter was removed in 1926 to differentiate this church from a nearby, similarly named church. It was eventually changed again to Evangelical Reformed, then back to Memorial Reformed Church and, just recently, to City Park Church. (Local tradition asserts that the building was designed by architect Hall Crews who lived at 418 Acadia Street. Crews, however, joined a New York firm before returning to Winston-Salem and was not registered in North Carolina until 1923.)

Gothic Revival (1830 -1880, later in rural areas) – A style of architecture in America aimed at reviving the spirit and forms of Gothic architecture, which was the prevalent style during the High Middle Ages in Western Europe, emerging from the Romanesque and Byzantine forms in France. It features a steeply pitched roof with steep cross-gables; is often decorated with vergeboard (Bargeboard); includes wall surfaces and windows that extend into the gable (often with a pointed-arch/gothic shape); and may feature large-scale projecting bay windows (or oriel style windows). It often includes lancet windows, with drip-molds common above the windows.

Lancet Window - A lancet window is a tall, narrow window with a pointed arch at its top. It acquired the "lancet" name from its resemblance to a lance. The lancet window first appeared in the early French Gothic period (c. 1140–1200), but remained popular in the English period of Gothic architecture (1200–1275). So common was the lancet window feature that this era is sometimes known as the "Lancet Period.”

A pointed arch, ogival arch, or Gothic arch is an arch with a pointed crown, whose two curving sides meet at a relatively sharp angle at the top of the arch.