South Main Baptist Church

The preacher who led the 1930 dedication came from Dallas, where he had held one pulpit for thirty-three years. George W. Truett, born in 1867 near Hayesville, North Carolina, followed his parents to Whitewright, Texas, whose Baptists pressed him at a Saturday meeting to enter the ministry and ordained him the next day. As Baylor's financial secretary he cleared its $92,000 debt in twenty-three months. He pastored First Baptist Church of Dallas from 1897 until his death in 1944, held cowboy camp meetings in the Davis Mountains, and presided over the Southern Baptist Convention and the Baptist World Alliance.

What the plaque says

South Main Baptist Church In 1903, state evangelist Livingston T. Mays of the Baptist General Convention of Texas held a tent revival meeting at the corner of Tuam and Fannin, with 32 local Baptists, including many from existing congregations, forming a new church and calling Mays to be pastor. They built a sanctuary at the site of the tent revival and in March of 1904, adopted the name Tuam Avenue Baptist Church. The church grew quickly and, with more than 300 members in 1920, purchased a new site for a temporary structure designed by architect Alfred Finn. Renaming themselves South Main Baptist Church, members hired the noted firm Sanguinet, Staats, Hedrick & Gottlieb as architects for a new campus in 1924. The design evolved, beginning with Spanish and Moorish influences, and was completed in 1930 with strong Northern Italian elements. The congregation, having grown to nearly 1,500, dedicated its new structure in March 1930 with week-long services led by Dr. George W. Truett, a prominent Baptist leader. The campus grew, along with the congregation, which expanded its outreach in 1955 with radio and television broadcasts of services. Following World War II, the congregation's commitment to local and national mission churches increased, and the church worked in cooperation with the Union Baptist Association. South Main's many outreach efforts have included ministries for non-English speaking immigrants, with services in Korean, Japanese, Cambodian and Chinese. With a library and extensive Sunday School and Bible study programs, the multicultural church has emphasized education throughout its history, with a continued commitment to independent religious thought and community service. (2003)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 0.3 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.
• Rothko Chapel — 0.8 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 0.9 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.
• The Menil Collection — 1.0 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.

More markers nearby

• The Houston Light Guard — 0.3 mi
• Louis Wiltz Kemp — 0.3 mi
• The Waldo Mansion — 0.3 mi
• The Blue Bird Circle — 0.3 mi