"A Raleigh businessman has purchased a historic downtown church damaged in last year's tornado, saving it from demolition.

Phuc Tran paid $125,000 for the Gethsemane Seventh-Day Adventist Church building on South Person Street, according to the deed. Condemned by the city after April's storm, the church will house Tran's office once the building is restored.

"I love Raleigh," said Tran, an enterprise architect. "It's the capital city, and it has a lot of historical value to it."

Dating to 1920, Gethsemane Seventh-Day Adventist is significant for two reasons:

One, it's one of the first SDA churches in North Carolina built for a black congregation. In 1920, black Seventh-Day Adventists were still a rarity by comparison to other faiths. When the first such church started in Tennessee in the 1880s, estimates of total black membership in the nation came in at about 50.

By the 1980s, the congregation grew large enough to sell the building and move out of downtown, but the white block church at Person and Cabarrus streets still acts as a spiritual home.

Second, Gethsemane's construction is unusual for the time and budget. It's built in an offbeat, stucco style with smaller rocks hand-pressed onto each block. Deed covenants now prevent it from being torn down, said Myrick Howard, president of Preservation North Carolina."

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News & Observer (1/1/2012)