First Christian Church of Fort Worth

The church on this corner, built in 1914 and 1915, is the congregation's fourth building and replaced the Old Rock Church. Architects E. W. Van Slyke and Clyde H. Woodruff gave it a Beaux Arts design under a copper dome, with a steel frame and walls of limestone from Lueders, Texas. The west wall could be lifted mechanically to add seating for 250 more people. A seven-story annex of 1929 held classrooms, a gymnasium and a swimming pool and was demolished in the early 1990s. The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

What the plaque says

First Christian Church of Fort Worth City's pioneer congregation. Organized by the Rev. A.M. Dean, who with hymn book and revolver came in 1855 to the riotous six-year-old hamlet on the Trinity. He held services (at present Belknap and Houston streets) in a log house built for post surgeon, 2nd Dragoons, U.S. Army, stationed at fort that gave the city its name. Charter members were: Mr. and Mrs. James K. Allen, Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin P. Ayres, Mrs. Francis M. Durrett, Mrs. Alfred D. Johnson, Mrs. Florence Peak, Mr. and Mrs. William A. Sanderson, and Stephen Terry. First regular meeting place, a one-story concrete house at present Belknap and Lamar, was used on weekdays by Col. John Peter Smith (member of congregation) for sessions of the first public school established in Fort Worth. Rev. Mr. Dean, a frontier farmer, was followed as pastor by Dr. B.F. Hall, a dentist, and by Dr. Mansell Mathews, physician and judge of Red River County, and head of a large family grazing cattle in this area. Confederate General R.M Gano of Grapevine after the Civil War preached regularly at this church. In later 1860s came the Rev. Joseph Clark and sons Addison and Randolph, who in 1873 founded Add-Ran College, forerunner of Texas Christian University. First Christian is the oldest church in Fort Worth. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tarrant County Courthouse — 0.3 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 1.9 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 2.2 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 2.7 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• Amon G. Carter — steps away
• Fort Worth Library — steps away
• General William Jenkins Worth (1794-1849) — steps away
• Ephraim Merrill Daggett — steps away