First United Methodist Church of Pearland

The 1900 hurricane destroyed nearly all of early Pearland, and the city's history says it cut the population by almost three quarters. A two-story high school was finished in 1912, and the 1915 hurricane damaged the town again, taking the top off that new school. Telephone lines were strung in 1917. A water district formed in 1949 to help fund water and sewer lines, and in the 1950s the Lions Club led the push for garbage collection, sidewalks and streetlights. Pearland incorporated as a city in 1959, with a mayor, council and city marshal.

What the plaque says

First United Methodist Church of Pearland Though local Methodist worship can be traced to 1894, this congregation was officially organized in 1898 as the Methodist Episcopal Church of Pearland. The original frame building, shared with other denominations, was damaged in the storm of 1900 and destroyed in the hurricane of 1915. A new structure was completed by 1917. With activities such as Sunday School programs and a ladies' aid group, the congregation grew steadily. A new sanctuary was required in 1947; the 1917 structure became a fellowship hall. New facilities were acquired as needed. With over 2,000 members in its centennial year, the congregation continues to uphold the traditions of its founders. (1998)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Space Center Houston — 11 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Emancipation Park — 13 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 13 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 13 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Zychlinski Park — steps away
• Robert L. and Julia Martin Hunter — 0.3 mi
• Pearland and The Santa Fe Railroad — 1.9 mi
• Fig Industry in Friendswood — 6.4 mi