First United Methodist Church Richardson

The church grew to six thousand members because the town around it exploded. The Handbook of Texas says Richardson had 1,288 people in 1952 and 16,810 in 1960, drawn by Collins Radio, a Texas Instruments campus beside the city limits and the 1954 extension of Central Expressway. The Dallas Morning News dubbed it Remarkable Richardson. Farm fields became shopping centers and additions such as Richardson Heights, and by 1970 the city held 43,900. Schools were desegregated in 1965, and a graduate research center opened in 1964 that became the University of Texas at Dallas in 1969.

What the plaque says

First United Methodist Church Richardson Organized as the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, of Richardson, Texas, in 1886, the church was first served by circuit-riding preacher Thomas Jefferson Milam (1843 - 1917). For the first twelve years, services were held in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. In 1898, the congregation bought one acre of land on Greenville Avenue from the Houston and Texas Central Railroad, and a white frame church was built. A parsonage was added in 1912, and a pump organ was purchased in 1916. As membership increased, the small church proved inadequate, and final services were held there in April 1924. A new red brick building was opened in 1925, and the congregation became a full station in 1932. The church purchased land on Beltline Road in 1954. A fellowship hall, serving as a temporary sanctuary, and a 22-room educational building were opened on April 13, 1958. A new educational building was erected in July 1960, and the sanctuary and administrative offices were dedicated on September 13, 1964. An activities building was completed in 1972 and a chapel in 1982. With the 1968 merger of the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the name was changed to First United Methodist Church Richardson. The church experienced tremendous growth beginning in the 1960s, growing to 6,000 members. Additional land was acquired over the years and the campus was expanded. In 1999, acreage was purchased on Central Expressway between Beltline and Arapaho roads. The congregation broke ground on April 18, 2004 and held opening worship at the new campus on March, 26, 2006. The church continues to live out the mission of the United Methodist Church. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fair Park — 12 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 12 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.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 12 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.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 13 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.

More markers nearby

• Richardson — 0.3 mi
• First Presbyterian Church of Richardson — 0.5 mi
• First Baptist Church of Richardson — 0.5 mi
• Wheeler School — 0.7 mi