First Baptist Church of Irving

Irving was a town platted from a railroad survey. The Handbook of Texas says Julius Otto Schulze and Otis Brown, members of a Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railway crew in fall 1902, decided to found a town on the proposed line. They bought 80 acres from rancher Henry Britain and held a lot auction on December 19, 1903. Older farm communities nearby, including Kit, Sowers, Twin Wells, Union Bower, Bear Creek and Estelle, were later annexed. Irving voters incorporated the town in 1914.

What the plaque says

First Baptist Church of Irving When the town of Irving was founded in 1903, developers Julius Otto Schulze and Otis Brown set aside parcels of land for the Baptist, Church of Christ, and Catholic denominations. The new town grew steadily, and by January 1904 the Irving Baptist Church was organized. Led by the Rev. Dr. J. B. Gambrell, the congregation began with eighteen charter members. The Rev. W. J. Shipman was called as First Pastor, and he conducted worship services once a month. Early worship services were held in a local schoolhouse, in rented quarters, and in a temporary tabernacle on this site until a permanent structure was completed in 1911. The Rev. W. T. Newsom became the congregation's first full-time pastor in 1920. The name was changed from Irving Baptist Church to First Baptist Church of Irving in 1940. A new sanctuary was completed in 1951, and by 1964 the church's facilities had expanded to include an entire city block. The First Baptist Church has grown with the City of Irving. Since its humble beginnings in 1904, the church's services to the community have grown to include a variety of worship, educational, missionary, and outreach programs. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 8.3 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 8.6 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 9.6 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 11 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.

More markers nearby

• City of Irving — 0.6 mi
• Daniel Webster Gilbert, M. D. — 2.8 mi
• Eagle Ford Community — 3.4 mi
• Jordan-Hight Family Cemetery — 3.7 mi