Zion Lutheran Church

Gotthilf Birkmann's own account of 1879 shows how small the start was. Called from Fedor that summer, he found about ten voting members and thirty to forty people at services. Until the chapel on Live Oak Street was done, the congregation met in an English-speaking Baptist church. Karl Ax paid for the chapel, finished in about six weeks, and it seated roughly eighty-five for services in German. Birkmann taught school at a dollar a month per child, and about twenty-five paying students covered his living costs. His sister Kaethe ran the school from 1881 to 1883.

What the plaque says

Zion Lutheran Church Soon after German Lutherans began arriving in Dallas in the 1870s, they began to gather for worship. In 1874, the Rev. Tirmenstein from New Orleans started leading the Lutherans in worship, and others soon followed, utilizing facilities of the First Baptist Church for the German-language services. In 1879, under the Rev. G. Birkmann, the group organized the German Evangelical Lutheran Zions Congregation of Dallas. That same year, the newly formed congregation constructed a building that provided space for a sanctuary, pastor's living quarters and a school. The Rev. Birkmann served as both pastor and the school's first teacher, a practice continued by his successors. During the late 1800s and into the 20th century, the congregation continued to grow. Along with increasing membership came many changes, including several relocations and building expansions. Other important changes occurred in 1940, when the church discontinued use of the German language in worship services, and in 1944, when the congregation became known as Zion Lutheran Church. The school also experienced changes, reopening in 1948 after a period of declining enrollment brought about in part by the spread of nearby suburban areas. Through all these years, the Zion Lutheran congregation has been actively involved in the community. It has focused on outreach, particularly through youth groups and mission work within the city and in other countries. Today, Zion Lutheran Church and its school continue to serve spiritual and educational needs in Dallas. (2006)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fair Park — 4.9 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.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 5.0 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.
• Dallas Museum of Art — 5.0 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.
• Dallas Heritage Village at Old City Park — 5.6 mi
  Dallas's first city park, laid out around Browder's Spring in 1876, now a museum of historic buildings moved here from across North Texas, among them Millermore, a cotton planter's mansion.

More markers nearby

• John Goodwin Tower — 1.7 mi
• Caruth Pioneer Cemetery — 1.8 mi
• Highland Park Methodist Church — 1.9 mi
• Civilian Conservation Corps Company 2896 — 2.9 mi