St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

The 1921 church rose on land given by O. M. Carter, who launched the Heights. Born outside Boston, Carter ran hardware stores and served as a county treasurer in Nebraska before leaving Omaha in 1890 with about half a million dollars from investors to build a suburb near Houston. His land company went bust in 1893, setting off a run on a Carter bank in Grafton. He lost two fingers in a 1900 ambush at his furniture factory, lost his son Arthur in a 1905 accident at the Heights water works, and died in Houston on January 6, 1928.

What the plaque says

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church Organized in 1911 as a mission, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church has roots in St. Stephen's Episcopal Mission, which served the Houston Heights community from 1896 to 1903. Many of the communicants of St. Stephen's became charter members of St. Andrew's, which was named for the earlier mission's rector, Benjamin Andrew Rogers. Fifty-three Episcopalian Heights residents gathered in the home of the Rev. and Mrs. Henry Justus Brown to organize the mission; the Rev. Brown became its first rector. Members met in a hardware store before erecting a building on Allston Street on lots donated by the Rev. Rogers' widow and her daughter. In 1921, construction began on a new, two-story building on property donated by O.M. Carter at 19th and Yale streets. A final move occurred in 1948, when a new church building was completed on Heights Boulevard. Under the leadership of the Rev. Haskin V. Little, St. Andrew's experienced congregational growth and expanded its outreach programs. The Rev. Little served as rector from 1952 to 1977, and as rector emeritus until his death in 2000. From 1962-1965, the church participated in the Diocesan Cuban Refugee Resettlement Program, providing for a Cuban family. Other notable programs include St. Andrew's co-sponsorship and support of Heights Towers (1975) and Heights House (1980), two high-rise apartment buildings providing housing for low-income elderly individuals. Church members have reached out extensively to those in need in the Heights community, and have supported local and international missions. Today, St. Andrew's Episcopal Church continues to have a positive impact on the Heights neighborhood and the city of Houston at large. (2010)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 3.3 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Rothko Chapel — 4.5 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.
• The Menil Collection — 4.5 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.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 4.8 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

• Daniel Denton Cooley — steps away
• Houston Heights Woman's Club — steps away
• Reagan Masonic Lodge No. 1037 A. F. & A. M. — steps away
• Heights Church of Christ — 0.2 mi