Medievalesque Twin Towers in Fairhope

Twin Beach AME Church, built in 1925 near Fairhope, Alabama, is a locally significant ornamental concrete-block church designed and constructed by Axal Johnson. Rising on a small knoll just outside the city limits, the one-story gable-front building featured twin square towers, lancet stained-glass transoms, stuccoed upper stories, and brick-trimmed windows, expressing a distinctive medieval eclecticism rare in Baldwin County. Its sanctuary retained a high degree of interior integrity, with plastered walls, beaded-board ceilings, paneled pews, and an elaborately carved wooden pulpit. The congregation traced its origins to Zion Chapel, formed in 1867 by Black residents near Battles Wharf, and the structure represents the community's first enduring house of worship after earlier buildings were lost to fire and storm. - AsNotedIn