Thompson Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church Property: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Harriet Tubman National Historic Park

Auwaerter, John

The Thompson Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church Property is part of the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park (NHP), located the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. Harriet Tubman has long been associated with her extraordinary work with abolitionist causes and as the Underground Railroad's most famous “conductor.” Her heroic efforts in personally leading approximately 70 people out of slavery to freedom in the North defined her as the “Moses of her People.” Harriet Tubman NHP was officially established in January 2017 and is composed of three of the four properties most closely associated with her free life: The Harriet Tubman Home (Home for the Aged) and the Tubman Farm (Tubman residence) on South Street (NY 34) that straddle the City of Auburn and Town of Fleming boundary; and the Thompson Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church on Parker Street in the City of Auburn (the fourth is the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad NHP in Maryland). The thirty-two acres of The Harriet Tubman Home and Tubman Farm are owned by the A.M.E. Zion Church of America and managed by a nonprofit organization established by the church, The Harriet Tubman Home, Inc., in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS). The half-acre church property is owned by the NPS. The Thompson A.M.E. Zion Church is the place where Harriet Tubman worshipped and from which she was buried in 1913. The parish moved out of the church in 1993 and the property is no longer used for religious purposes. Erected in 1891 on the southern part of the property, the church serves as the focal point. The modest Queen Anne-style frame building measures approximately 32 feet wide by 50 feet long, and features a square bell tower at the front that has a truncated spire and louvered windows. Other details include Queen Anne-style colored-glass windows, drop siding, bargeboards, and an Onondaga limestone foundation that is parged. The building is undergoing stabilization with planning underway for its rehabilitation for park use. On the northern portion of the church property is the parsonage, a modest Classical Revival-style two-story gable-front house with a Foursquare plan. The house features a Palladian-style attic window, one-over-one doublehung sash windows, a front porch, clapboard siding, and a caststone foundation. It is presently undergoing exterior restoration that has removed asbestos shingle siding and nonhistoric components of the front porch. A public concrete sidewalk extends across the frontage of the property, and abuts a concrete entrance ramp to the front entrance of the church, and a concrete walk to the entrance of the parsonage. There are no foundation plantings around the buildings, and the space between them is mown grass. Except for an unmaintained gravel driveway along the north side of the parsonage, there is no defined circulation to the rest of the property. The rear (west) half is covered in successional woods comprised of black locust, box elder, Norway maple, and English ivy that continues north and south onto adjacent properties. These woods extend back to the west property line that borders residential properties along Park Place. This rear part of the property is a relatively level terrace that ends at a bank approximately three feet high along the west (rear) and north boundaries of the property.

Thompson Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church Property: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Harriet Tubman National Historic Park

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