File:King Avenue United Methodist Church - DPLA - 99d18d678a860c973d46aa7e60bb59cd (page 1).jpg

Photographs taken by A.V. Shirk of the King Avenue Methodist Church. On May 30, 1889 the King Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church was established with 30 members. A small stone chapel was constructed on the south west corner of Neil and West 5th Avenues and dedicated on December 23, 1889. On March 5, 1904 a second larger church building was dedicated on the same site. This building caught fire during repairs on August 23, 1918 and was destroyed. Plans were made to replace the fire damaged building and on October 8, 1922 the third and last building was dedicated. Albin Vineyard Shirk, commonly known as “A.V.” was born on April 8, 1938. He grew up in Ohio and graduated from Worthington High School, later attending The Ohio State University in the late 1950s. AV worked at the Columbus Dispatch in the Classified Advertising Department, but in 1960 he got a job with WOSU and did music programming and also started producing his own radio shows until 1964. He recorded many of the folk music and protest music concerts performed in the University area. Most of these were held at the Sacred Mushroom coffee house, owned by Miles and Joan Gibbons or at Larry's bar. Both venues were located on North High Street across from the OSU campus. He then went into commercial photography, and worked at a variety of jobs, eventually relocating to Tucson, Arizona in 1976. He returned to Columbus in 1996.