Historical Marker
Meadowbrook Methodist Church
Fort Worth, Tarrant County · Texas
Erected 1993
The stone sanctuary on Meadowbrook Drive was designed by Wiley G. Clarkson, the Fort Worth architect who also drew the Masonic Temple and, as one architecture guide notes, First United Methodist Church downtown. Built in 1949 in Gothic Revival style, it came first. An education wing followed around 1954, a separate fellowship hall about 1959 and more classrooms in 1968, each echoing Clarkson's original design. A free-standing community center was added in 2004. In 2020 Poly United Methodist Church merged with the congregation, and the two now use the name Meadowbrook-Poly United Methodist Church.
What the plaque says
Meadowbrook Methodist Church This congregation traces its original to the establishment in 1911 of the Sycamore Heights Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Sagamore Hill Methodist Episcopal Church, South. These two small mission congregations, initially led by theology student Alonzo Monk, Jr., were located in the Meadowbrook section of the former Polytechnic Community of eastern Fort Worth. Having outgrown their respective facilities by 1925, the two churches, located within the same residential district, merged in 1928 to form the Meadowbrook Methodist Episcopal Church, South. That year, 475 charter members held their first church services in a newly built two-story frame sanctuary located in the 3900 block of Meadowbrook Drive. The Rev. Jesse Herman Baldridge was the congregation's First Pastor. In 1939 the Meadowbrook Methodist Episcopal Church, South, became the Meadowbrook Methodist Episcopal Church. The frame building was converted to a Sunday school and a new Gothic-style stone sanctuary was completed in 1949. Subsequent building programs over the next two decade resulted in the improvement of classroom facilities and the construction of a fellowship hall. Meadowbrook United Methodist Church continues to serve the community with a variety of programs. (1993)
Where it stands
32.74255, -97.26747 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Tarrant County Courthouse — 4.0 miA 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.
- Fort Worth Stockyards — 5.6 miThe 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.
- Kimbell Art Museum — 5.7 miLouis 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 — 5.9 miA 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.