First Presbyterian Church

First Presbyterian Church

First Presbyterian Church West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
1895–1896, James B. Stewart. 1912–1913, Sunday school, Fulton and Butler. 1917, interior alterations, Meanor and Sweeney. 1951, 1988. South side of 5th Ave. between 10th and 11th sts.

An early issue of Manufacturers Record described the first church built by the congregation as having “a slight tendency towards the Gothic style of architecture.” The same could be said of this replacement. Actually a mixture of Gothic and Romanesque, with a brick nave hiding behind a yellow sandstone facade, the church represents an amalgam of numerous building campaigns, remodelings, and additions. Battlemented towers of unequal heights, both rather stubby, flank the entrance, where deeply incised chevron moldings accentuate the round arches. Above, a pointed-arched window is filled with modern stained glass, its tracery as important to the design as the glass it contains.

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