I'll admit I didn't recognize this building when I got these postcards. Gee, I thought, this must be some church on the south end of town that they've since torn down. So I "drove" (in my head) all through the south side of town, trying to figure out which corner this church used to be on.

Later, I went back to Macon to visit my mother and I happened to drive by the Methodist Church. The real Methodist church. The one that I remember always being there on Duff street.

I noticed the distinctive half-octagon protrusion. I held the card up to the building. Hey, it's the same church!

It sure doesn't look like that any more. It's been added to several times and it now looks modern in a quaint old-fashion kind of way. No wonder I didn't recognize it.

But why is it called the "South" Methodist Church on the postcard? (That's what originally convinced me that it was some former building on the south part of town.)

Wikipedia to the rescue.

The Methodist denomination in America is fraught with splits and mergers. In 1820, the Methodist Protestant Church split from the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church split into the northern Methodist Episcopal Church and the Souther Methodist Episcopal Church. When the postcards were made, this was one of the "South" churches. Those two merged in 1939 with a third, the Methodist Protestant Church, which formed The Methodist Church. And in 1968, The Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren (which had its own history of mergers) to become The United Methodist Church. And that's where they stand today.

The two pictures were taken close to the same time — around the turn of the century. They both have an undivided back, which would date them in the first decade of the 20th century.

In one picture, the trees are in full foliage; in the other, they are bare as if it's winter.

I think it's interesting that the same telephone pole is leaning precipitously in both pictures. I hope they fixed it before it fell over.