Silverbrook United Methodist Church

This property has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior.


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Here follows a history of the Silverbrook school as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:

The Silverbrook School was located on Silverbrook Road next to Silverbrook United Methodist Church. The schoolhouse was built between 1896 and 1904 on land donated by the Rosenhammer family. It burned down around 1919 and was never rebuilt.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Clio Foundation website as written by Ben M:

Silverbrook Methodist Church was originally built in 1908 and is the only early 20th-century Gothic Revival church in the county that has largely remained unaltered. It features a steep roof, pointed windows, and a fishscale-covered bell tower. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

In the early 1900s, the town of Lorton was rural and residents had to walk around five miles to get to the nearest Methodist church, which they considered too far away. There was also no place for them to gather. As a result, building a new church was the clear solution. Construction began in 1906 and was completed in 1908. Its design followed a national trend of Gothic-style churches being around the country. In Silverbrook Church's case, its design is an example of the picturesque Gothic Revival vernacular style, which was used by many small churches from the mid-19th to early 20th centuries.

The church was used for worship services and as a place for the community to gather and hold meetings. A number of organizations have used it over the years including Boy Scouts. It's also been used as a precinct for voting. An addition was built for the Sunday school classes in 1957.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Patch newspaper:

Lorton History: The Tradition Lives On at Silverbrook Church
Our history columnist talks about the church and her family's ties to it
Written by Irma Clifton,
Posted Fri, May 6, 2011 at 3:15 am ET

Through the years the Lorton Community has relied upon churches to be not only the base for one’s faith but to serve as a center of social activities as well. , the little white church on Silverbrook Road, has been one of those churches. Named for a small brook that flows just to the east of the church, it is said that the brook was named by the Evans family who moved to the area from Maine. Family members thought the sunlight reflecting off the water in the brook looked like silver, hence the name.

Before the church had a building, Sunday School classes were held in Silverbrook School, a structure located near where the church stands today. Local lore and church records reflect that the church was started by John Wehn, who moved to the area from Baltimore in 1895. Settling first on a rented farm near Lee Chapel Church in Burke, by 1904 he and his wife, my great aunt “Lizzy” along with their daughter Elsie, had purchased a farm near Silverbrook. The nearest Sunday School at that time was at Cranford Church in Gunston, nearly five miles away. Securing permission to have Sunday School classes in the school building, Wehn soon had adults attending as well. The need for a new church became apparent and fund raising began soon after.

In 1906 the first building committee meeting was held. By this time the Wehn’s daughter, Elsie, had married a man named Robert Harrover who was a carpenter. By late 1906 the fledgling church building committee selected Robert Harrover and another local carpenter, Gus Grimsley, to build a new church. They were to be paid a wage of 25 cents per hour. As additional funds were raised construction continued. The church was completed at a cost of $570.00 and dedicated in 1908. The first minister was Reverend Christopher Sydenstricker, uncle to the noted author Pearl Sydenstricker Buck.

The church became not only a place of worship but a social center where ham and oyster dinners were held, quilting bees were organized and from early-on the annual all-day home-coming events were eagerly looked forward to. My grandfather, John Mahon, contributed work on the church as did many men in the community. He lived within a mile and a half so the family developed close ties to the church early on. In later years family members who had migrated to Baltimore would never fail to come back for home-coming each year. My aunt, Nettie Mahon Hancock donated the large bible that is displayed at the church and upon the death of my cousin, David Hancock, his electric organ, which is in use at the church today, was donated.

One of my early memories of attending Sunday School in the 1940s and 1950s at the church was the pot-bellied stoves which were used for heating. Classes had to meet in the church as there were no additions for that purpose and in the winter each class would jockey for a position near the stove. During good weather the classes were held outside. For many years my Sunday School teacher was “Miss Elsie” Harrover, wife of the church carpenter mentioned above. She also played the piano and organ. There was always a large Vacation Bible School attendance for, as with other churches in the area, it was about the only organized thing you could do in our rural area for fun and excitement during the summer months.

A well-maintained cemetery is directly behind the church with the earliest stone dating just a few years after the church was dedicated. It contains stones with names familiar in the area such as Mahon, Harrover, Gatewood, Wolfe and others.

Silverbrook Church has changed over the years and as more activities were planned and held, additional space was needed. A wing housing a kitchen, meeting space, offices and space to expand the church sanctuary when needed, was added. Much of the credit for shepherding this expansion through the county bureaucracy is due to the late Harold Wilson, a long-time member. Although the church has never had a large congregation it has maintained its size and for the past several years it has had a full-time pastor. In addition to their regularly scheduled services the church has special activities throughout the year as it continues its tradition of being not only a center of the faith community but of the social one too.

Constructed in the Late Gothic Revival style the church was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register in September of 2003 and on the National Register of Historic Places in January of 2004.


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Here follows an excerpt from the church's website:

100 years and more:
Silverbrook Methodist Church, at 8616 Silverbrook Road in Lorton, Virginia, is a well-maintained example of an early-twentieth-century Gothic Revival-style rural church with good architectural integrity. The original church, which contains a sanctuary, was built between 1906 and 1908, and is a rectangular, one-story, one-room, gable-front, frame structure with a projecting front vestibule topped by a bell tower. The church is 24 feet by 40 feet, has weatherboard siding, an uncoursed fieldstone foundation, and a steep gable roof clad with standing-seam metal. Its bell tower is covered with wooden fish scale shingles and is capped by a metal roof and finial. Windows are rectangular topped by a Gothic triangular arch. Connected to the northwest elevation is a one-story cinder block addition added in 1957. It has metal windows and a lower-sloped asphalt shingle roof. Another cinder block addition was added in 1990 to the rear of the first addition and has wooden sash windows and an asphalt shingle roof. There are two non- contributing outbuildings to the rear of the property. The graveyard, located on the northern and rear section of the property, dates from 1911 and is a contributing site. The wooded setting of the church has not changed drastically.

Exterior
The southeast elevation of the church has three windows and a cinder block chimney with a flue for oil heat.

The northeast elevation, or rear, has gable-roofed apse, with a window on each perpendicular side wall to the main body of the church.

The northwest elevation has one window next to where the addition was added. The first rectangular addition attached to the rear half of the northwest comer, was completed in 1957 to create two Sunday school rooms and a social hall. The walls are white painted cinder blocks with metal windows and the addition has a normal-pitched asphalt shingle roof. The second addition, completed in 1990, extends beyond the rear of the first addition and is also constructed of white painted cinder blocks with a roof of asphalt shingles but with wooden windows. This addition added a kitchen and two bathrooms.

Two non-contributing structures to the northeast rear of the site are smaller outbuildings of concrete blocks and asphalt shingle roofs. The structure facing southwest was built in 1969 and serves as a storage building. The structure facing northwest was built in 1976 and served as the privy until the bathrooms were added. This privy replaced a wooden one that was removed. The contributing graveyard to the north of the church is still active. The earliest grave marker is dated 1911; the latest one is dated 2010. There are 42 well-maintained marked graves. The front yard of the church has connecting concrete sidewalks from the front doors to the side door. The driveway and parking lot are paved and the church has two exits to Silverbrook Road.

Interior:
The interior of the sanctuary still retains most of the original architectural and religious components. The flooring is tongue-and-groove pine board with a carpet over it. The interior trim of the windows and doors is four inches wide, molded and stained dark. The ceiling, wainscoting and apse are covered in beaded tongue-and-groove pine boards that are stained dark. The pulpit is centered on a dais fronted by an altar rail with turned balusters. On each side of the apse rises a turned post supporting an unusual arched spindle frieze extending across the top of the apse opening. The white painted walls above the wainscot are drywall. The pews are stained dark and match the wood of the wainscoting.

Electric lights have been added, but the original kerosene bracket-type lamps are still attached to the window trim. The northwest wall is where the 1957 addition was added and has flat interior doors leading into the hall.

Landscape:
The landscape of the church property is essentially unchanged. On the southwest side, the prison farm field across the road has not changed since the church was built. The church has always had either a dirt or gravel driveway. The wooded land adjoining the property has stayed intact. On the southeast side the land is now part of a Fairfax County park. The land bordering the northeast property line has newer townhouses with a buffer zone of trees between them and the church. The adjacent parcel to the northwest has new houses, constructed in 2000, with larger single-family homes, but still with a buffer of trees. The church originally was part of a rural farm setting. Now the site it occupies is an oasis of the past in a changing suburban environment.

The church and the community evolved together, as in the beginning, to accomplish these projects. Most of the maintenance and construction throughout the years has allowed this church to outreach with more efficiency to the community, and encouraging volunteer labor and materials from members, nonmembers and businesses alike.

Silverbrook’s graveyard, a contributing resource, continues to serve the funerary needs of the community. The earliest stone is dated 1911, and the most recent is dated 2010, with a total of 40 well-maintained graves.