Historic Temples, Churches
& Cemeteries

Greenville’s Jewish history dates to 1867 and includes the city’s first elected mayor, Leopald Wilzinski. An earlier structure was built on this site and dedicated in 1880.The current temple was erected in 1906 and boasts exquisite stained-glass windows. Also housed at the temple is the Century of History Museum.

For 140 years, Mt. Horeb Missionary Baptist Church has been an important part of the city’s religious life. The congregation was established in 1864; however, its first church was not built until 1868 on Levee Street. The church moved to its present site in 1909.The current structure was built in 1971.

St. John’s was one of the first churches in the region, built around 1830. During the Civil War, lead from the church’s stained glass windows was melted to make mini balls. After the war, the church, was destroyed by a cyclone and the ruins remain on the site. Don’t forget your camera: the majesty of these ruins makes it one of Mississippi’s most photographed historic sites.

This Romanesque Revival structure was built in 1828. For nearly a century, the Sacred Heart congregation has been dedicated to educating area youth. In 1910, the Divine Word Missionaries established a parochial school for African-American youth. On the same site in 1920, Father Matthew Christmann helped train and instruct African-American priests.

This exquisite Neo-Gothic Church was erected in 1907 and has a sister church in Haarlem, Holland. The church was designed and financed by Father P. J. Korstenbroek, a Dutch nobleman who was the parish priest for 33 years. Father Korstenbroek’s charity was memorialized in Lanterns on the Levee, the memoirs of William Alexander Percy. St. Joseph’s famous stained glass windows are from the Munich studio of Emil Frei.

St. Matthew African Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in 1867. It was the first AME church established in the Delta and the fourth in Mississippi. The church’s original site on Levee Street was flooded by the Mississippi River, forcing the church to relocate to its present site in 1890.

[From “Art in Mississippi”, 1720-1980 By Patti Carr Black]
Probably the most important piece of funerary sculpture is the gravestone for Senator Leroy Percy in Greenville Cemetery. Conceived by William Alexander Percy, it was sculpted in 1930 by his friend Malvina Hoffman of New York City. Hoffman studied with Rodin in Paris and achieved her first fame with a monument in stone for the Harvard University alumni killed in World War I. Later she turned to bronze and achieved Lowry: “When I think about the geography of Greenville, I automatically place at its center its great bronze knight. Myth provokes the imagination by means of mystery. In Greenville, mystery has its own concrete expression. In the middle of the town cemetery, there is a statue marking the grave of Will Percy’s father. The statue is huge, a gloomy bronze knight in chain mail, his head down, eyes lowered, sword point between his feet. An enormous marble slab flanks the knight. Engraved in the marble atop the knight’s head is the name PERCY. We used to go to the cemetery to visit the melancholy knight, to scare ourselves and touch him, to look up and wonder at his presence. Sometimes we’d turn down the wrong road and miss him and then come upon him by surprise which scared us even more…Influence in quirky. Mystery sticks.”