Description:
The Avery Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church descended from a congregation which dates back to 1889. The congregation held services at two other sites in the years before 1907 when the building pictured here, Avery Chapel, was built at 429 E 1st (205 N Geary) in the Deep Deuce section of Oklahoma City. In 1959, the congregation again moved, this time to 1425 N Kelham to take over the vacated Kelham Avenue Baptist Church building. In 1917, a young Ralph Ellison moved into the parsonage of this church with his mother after his father’s death and it was in the church’s library that he first fell in love with books and writing.