Explore the history and architecture of some of the most prominent buildings in the community.

Old North is probably the oldest standing church building in Vanderburgh County.

The building was described as being one of the finest in the Midwest.

It's Victorian Gothic.

It's not pure Gothic because it's fat.

Historic churches of Evansville This program is made possible in part by a grant from Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations.

Other production support for Historic Churches of Evansville was provided by David Mathews and viewers like you.

Thank you.

Evansville starts out after McGarry buys the property in 1812.

They're really the first ten, 15 years, growth here is really, really slow.

A lot of the people are coming from the south.

The majority of people actually, you've got other people, middle states and then New England coming out of the south there.

And the most prolific you know, people there for for advancing religion at that time are the Methodists and the Baptists.

When Evansville is new and the countryside was new, there wasn't a whole lot of focus on religion.

I think you had a lot of these...They call them circuit riders and they would go to different parts and they would preach in a maybe a cabin or something.

And go from place to place.

They didn't really have an established church.

You saw a lot more of the churches be formed when the city started becoming established.

People were meeting, but it would be the old, you know, home church kind of a service there, you know, as opposed to we need a, you know, a big brick building with a steeple on it and a bell.

The first recorded church service in Evansville is on December 12th.

1819.

Then you McGarry's double barn warehouse people gather there.

The one thing that came out of that.

Then you end up with a fairly regular service.

The Presbyterians early on, they met at the courthouse there.

A lot of churches met at the county courthouse early.

The Methodists.

I know at one point there they were meeting in the room next to Warner's Tavern, and it was the one where when it was time for church service, Warner had to go, you know, push all the card players and all the drinkers and stuff out of the room, you know, for church time.

Evansville through the 1820s you're talking population only in the hundreds there.

And so you have people coming through and, you know, starting to settle.

But the churches kind of lagged behind, you know until there were enough people.

In 1821 Reverend Banks from over in Henderson started coming to Evansville there he was a Presbyterian minister.

It wasn't until 1832 that they were able to build the church the little church on the hill down on Second Street.

You could pretty much track the buildings of these churches with the growth of the city.

They started very much downtown and then they expanded out as the city got bigger.

In the 1830s when they finally chose Evansville to be the southern end of the central canal, which was going to connect to Indianapolis and connect to other canals in the state, you started getting more people coming in quicker to the area they saw a future here in Evansville and following that then comes the church, then in the 1830s.

Bishop Brodie from Vincennes and Father Beto come down and they meet with the, the few Catholics that are in Evansville at the time coming out of that came Assumption Church.

Churches built Methodist there it was five years later in 1837 and that they got a church built there that was on Locust Street then and that's the forerunner of Trinity.

And some of the churches would actually have a preset of predetermined set of plans that they would pick from that's why you see a lot of times Methodist churches will match other churches and you can always pick them out by the by the architecture.

You'll find a lot of these old churches were very noticeable on the old maps they stick out, they had really tall towers.

Sometimes they had a belfry.

Those bells would often ring out the time for people who, you know, weren't keeping time.

They were built to last.

And and, you know, a lot of times they were built frame at first.

But as the congregations got larger, as they got more money, sometimes they would invest in a brick structure or something larger.

And they were also built to inspire.

They had tall ceilings, stained glass windows.

You know, they were built to, you know, reflect the glory to God.

A lot of them also even predate electricity.

That's why you see those tall windows.

They they needed those big windows for light.

When you get really to the 1840s, the Germans start arriving.

So then you get the evangelical churches that way.

You also get the Baptists, the Methodists had their own German churches there for their denomination.

Holy Trinity is built as a Catholic church for German speaking residents of Evansville.

You think now they're German churches.

You think of Lutheran churches.

They weren't called Lutheran churches.

All the ones downtown you know, the German speaking were all, you know, whatever the name, evangelical church.

If you go to most of the the churches that were originally German, what doesn't matter what denomination there were, the cornerstones, the church name over the front door and stuff is still all in German.

So you would see a lot of splits in denominations where they they would have a church and they'd have a rift and then they'd split up.

They would have to find a new home.

At that point, you would also see mergers like with the Cumberland Presbyterian joined with the Presbyterians, and all of a sudden they had a surplus church.

Well, newer churches that were looking for a new building would find those perfectly suitable so some of those got filled, some of them got converted into hotels, residences, you know, various various things.

You see a lot of these churches were built a lot of auxiliary buildings.

They would have a hall, a rectory, some of that had convents.

And you really had this vibe of a whole like campus where they would almost compose the entire city block.

Churches were the centers of neighborhoods.

Churches were where people from same areas, you know, met schools.

A lot of a lot of these early churches had schools with them.

People didn't travel as far you know, like that.

So, you know, your your neighborhood, their their you know, was centered around that church then.

Saint Boniface was founded as the fourth German congregation in Evansville.

The first thing you had was assumption.

It was an English speaking one.

Holy Trinity was German St.Mary's was German.

Of those three, St. Mary's the one still there.

That was too far for the West Siders to go across the river over to that.

So then that's when they had a push to establish St. Boniface church.

As immigrants come in to the new area, they settled on the east side of the creek which is called Pigeon Creek, and they was mostly carpenters from Germany and Ireland.

They wanted a German church, their culture.

They wanted to be with the Germans.

So they came across from what was then called Lamasco to the West Side, which was called Independence.

They wanted to buy land so they bought the block independence and started the church.

As they got it completed, they started 1881, completed 82.

And then in 1902, lightning struck the church and burned inside out the steeples fell off, floors fell in, but they did maintain it was able to keep the side walls up above the windows and they rebuilt the church in 1902 and three.

There was just a need for a West Side German Catholic Church.

It's almost like the church then was built as a emblem of we've arrived.

And about the same time the Irish wanted their church, so they built one a block from here that was called Sacred Heart and they built their church down on West Franklin.

And then Saint Agnes was built which took care of the farmers and the railroaders.

So that was sort of how the cultures separated.

Most churches have a tower, and the reason for the tower was to let the people know really what time it was and keep them aware of a fire or something like that.

They stand 175 feet, which towers over the West Side.

Saint Boniface kind of went back to the old European, you know, look there.

But the interior is what made the churches there look, look a lot different.

Than most other churches.

This church is in the Historic Building Association and for that reason you can only do certain things to the building.

You can't change anything.

You have to try to reproduce it or redo it.

In '41, they had a real big decoration drive and they redid the altar area that led to marble floors and refinishing the statues.

Several times.

There's 33 statues in the church, not counting the stations of the Cross, the stations what you see on the wall, they had their inscription underneath in German, and they was afraid that the church would be damaged if they continued that practice.

So they painted over the inscriptions there during the German war.

We can still see parts of it.

If you look at a certain certain light the altar is probably the only thing that isn't oak in here.

Everything else was hardwoods oak, which they forested in this area, and the altar is made up of different softwoods and so on.

The church also has a grotto, which is a side chapel which is built under the church.

It was built as a replica of Lords in France with Bernadette, and it is used for Saturday Mass.

And when it was first built, workers would stop by at five 30 in the morning on their way to work and they would have services.

Then the building is brick, you know, around 15 inches thick on the walls and all old buildings.

They did not have foundations and they used what they call punk and brick, which is a real soft brick, and it would pull moisture.

And as the sun pulls it up, it brings it up the walls.

The stained glass the painting the statuary or all of that there.

When you go into Saint Boniface, this just all just hits you when you come in the door.

We got a chandelier to it is you got 159 bulbs in it.

It's on a rope metal cable which can be let down and the light's changed in.

I've been lucky to be able to find and keep a bunch of relics and memorabilia from the history of the church and we show them, ah, preserve them the church is, is for the community.

And I think the, the West Side was more or less built around it.

By 1811.

There's already a Methodist circuit from the Wabash River over to Louisville, from Vincennes down to the Ohio River.

And there are circuit riders coming through this area.

The first public religious service that we know of in Evansville, occurred on December 12, 1819.

It was a service held in Hugh McGary's warehouse, As a result of that, they began to have bi-weekly services.

So the first church was constructed on Locust Street between 2nd and 3rd.

It was not a real impressive church, but it was a very practical one.

As a matter of fact, they said at the time that they were trying to avoid extravagance on the one hand and meanness on the other.

It continued to grow, just as the town was growing.

And by the 1850s, they decided they needed a bigger structure.

So in 1860, they bought a lot at 3rd and Chestnut, which is where we are now.

So then in 1866 that's when they started building the church.

It's still their amazing church built out of brick.

They hired an architect by the name of Henry Mursinna, A local architect who designed this building now its not an original design .

He actually patterned it after a church in Newark, New Jersey.

Construction really started in the spring of 1864.

Mid-May they put the first brick in place and mid-June they did the cornerstone laying ceremony.

We know what's in the cornerstone but we don't know where the cornerstone is.

If you look at the building on the outside it's not obvious so we know what's in it we just don't know where it is.

The first part of the building was put in use in mid-June 1865 He had a young family; his wife Mary was pregnant at the time.

Unfortunately Reverend Fellows didn’t live to see that.

He was 37 years old when he died.

When the child was born a little while later it was a girl but they named her after her father Albion Fellows and then she marries Hilary Bacon years later and she becomes Albion Fellows Bacon who becomes a great house reformer in Indiana and in Evansville and is one of the more important people ever to come from Evansville.

If you would have been in this room in 1866 it would have looked different than it does now.

There are a couple things that would have been familiar to you.

It is a great vaulted hammerbeam wooden ceiling with a lot of ornamentation and it's a beautiful ceiling.

The other thing you would have seen are the chandeliers.

There are two chandeliers that were purchased in Philadelphia for 774 dollars by John Engle.

They originally were gas.

And for almost 100 years they have been electric.

The windows are not the original.

These were put in in 1911.

All these windows plus a lot more cost 2500 dollars .

And today you can't do a minor repair on one of these windows for 2500 dollars.

The pews and the altar furniture all are from the 1960s when they did a remodeling.

And the organ case is African mahogany.

And the organ is one of the larger ones in the city.

It goes back to 1961 but its been added to and modified quite a bit.

One of the features of a gothic building like this one is everything forces you to look upward.

The ceiling.

The windows which are like 5 feet wide and 24 feet high.

the arches, everywhere you have the pointed arches, and the top of the windows and throughout the decoration in here you see those arches.

The building was described as being one of the finest in the Midwest and they only were a little excessive perhaps but it Was an ornament to the town.

and even people who were not members of the church gave donations because they felt it would be something that the town could be proud of.

Trinity became the Methodist church and the downtown church.

I've done church history four other Methodist churches and it's like, no, Trinity gets mentioned all the time there because, you know, because of the church they had their congregation was a you know, name people in Evansville history.

They also were very instrumental, one of the early Methodist churches, in fact, the first one in town, then at founding a bunch of mission churches they found Kingsley Methodist in the 1860s that one's now defunct in the 1910 Bayard Park was expanding out.

They had established a Methodist church out there and then I think in 1913 they did a Wesley Methodist Church that's kind of on the near north side.

As was said at the dedication that congregation isn't a building or a great organ its the people.

And we have been very fortunate to have over the years wonderful people.

And we still do.

Liberty Baptist was founded in 1865.

It is noted that it's the oldest extant congregation African-American congregation in the city.

There was actually established not long after the signing Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln you have the Underground Railroad coming through Evansville.

The area where Liberty Baptist Church and that that gave rise to the name Baptist Town for that African-American area near downtown.

People lived in that area before in the days after the Civil War it grew even more.

Most of the colored people at that particular day congregated as they came across Ohio River from Kentucky in search of freedom you find that they were situated in this area and they could now was mosquito infested.

It was lower end.

Chestnut and Fifth Street is where they first gathered to establish Liberty Baptist Church in on May 1st 1865 some 23 people may have been instrumental who were former slaves in helping to establish Liberty Baptist Church.

Although black people were free at that time, they were not necessarily freed.

They were not allowed to be able to establish their church under their own.

They built a frame church soon after they were founded in 1866 that stayed there for quite a while.

It was like said to be about 35 feet by 35 feet.

They outgrew it.

So they tore down the old frame structure in 1880 and they built a new brick structure in the Gothic style on the same lot.

1880 is when this, I think about 60 by 90 structure was built... $10,000 was a lot of money and especially in the 1800s and then for black professionals, because that's what mostly filled this edifice during that time, that that was a lot.

The 1886 cyclone that came through and destroyed everything except the bell tower.

So the bell tower is the only thing that's original from the original church and I'm not sure why, but there's never been a bell in the bell tower.

They built this church that we sit situated in now around the bell tower in 1886.

So they had to rebuild it again, very similar to the original style.

I don't think they changed too much about it, you know, rebuilt it pretty much to its original form.

The black contractor rebuilt this edifice in seven months and I'm thinking now how long does it take us now with all the modern equipment, with all the modern technology that we have now, and you still couldn't get an edifice like this rebuilt in seven months time.

In 1959 they built an educational building next door.

About 2004 2005.

We had the retuck point the facility because of the the decay of the mortar, you know, it was like $100,000 to just redo tuck pointing.

Our edifice at Liberty Baptist Church is significant or kind of synonymous with any movement in the struggles of black people in the city of Evansville.

They were active in not just the religious but also in the rights of African-Americans in the area.

In the late 1880s, the minister there him and his wife, they were among the people they chose to test the Kentucky separate coach law.

We come through this process and I thank God for where we are today but there were times where it was still was not as kind to people of color in this area.

Liberty Baptist became like really the center centerpiece for the African-American community in Evansville.

The historical value of Liberty being here is always serves as a beacon or a beacon of light to the people of color that have endured the struggle in Evansville.

To know that Liberty come in through all the different struggles and to survive.

It it speaks volumes.

And then to be straight down the street from the city building speaks volumes.

People have respected this edifice and this church.

So you have the respect from one community, but you have the actual light and hope from another community that is that is significantly may serve just being in this community and just being on Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard.

200 years ago.

And we're not sure exactly what the date was because that's been lost to history.

But Evansville had 300 people and 12 people got together and decided to form a congregation after a while, that congregation grew and they built what is now called the little church on the Hill.

If you know where Strauss is on Main Street, there's a little placard on the side of the building that was the kind of a dedication to that.

That's about where it was originally located.

And the Presbyterian denomination in the early 1800s is in a period of change.

They had a rift between the two old school and new school philosophies.

Old school being more conservative, traditional Presbyterian and new school being a little bit more interested in evangelism on the frontier with revivals and working with other denominations.

Then along came the Civil War, and those two schools split into two more that was antislavery and pro-slavery.

And so there were four branches of Presbyterianism, and that existed until 1983 when they finally reunited and became the Presbyterian Church USA.

All of these antecedent congregations that now form First Presbyterian Church that was all played out here in Evansville with with different factions.

This building began well, it was finished in 1877.

Robert Boyd was the architect.

It's the one where they want you to know it's a church.

The church was built in the Gothic style in the back they had in addition by 1888 that matched the first part.

It's not pure Gothic because its fat Gothic would be far more narrow.

This is kind of wide but it's still, you know, 50 feet up.

When people come into this room for the first time, you can see what Gothic does because they start here and then their eyes just keep going up and everything around the building points up even the wainscoting on the walls, the little tri foils on the ends of the pews point up.

Everything just moves your face, your eyes, your you're thinking up when you come into this space.

Last renovation of this sanctuary it was in 1936 and some of the the leading ladies of the church went to New York to consult one of the leading interior decorators of the day and he came up with the stencil that's all over this building.

You have one stencil and you dab the cream color onto it.

That's when the rose window was installed as well.

That was a great gift.

It gave a central focus to the church.

That window is a Tiffany stained glass window, giving in memory of Gasalberry.

It's called Resurrection Mourned.

It's a very thick window.

Tiffany did his work by layering glass upon glass and laminating it.

So that's how he got the colors.

This window we don't know who created it.

It's called the Archer Window because an elder of the church, Samuel Archer, sat over there, and when he died, the children of the Sunday School gathered pennies and nickels and dimes and bought a stained glass window in memory of Father Archer.

Interesting.

Symbols in the tops of all of them, the area called the kite that kind of draw you into the story of the church.

Lots of vines and grapes and things around the windows, especially in the choir loft, but just beautiful windows.

The Fisk organ was built 30 years ago by the CB Fisk Company they're out of Massachusetts.

That's a magnificent instrument that contains pipes from two previous organs that were here in this sanctuary.

Recently, the American Guild of Organist Chapter here in Evansville found a a pipe organ that was built here in Evansville.

And they bought it and conditioned it completely.

And so we have it now on loan from them.

Before they put the Fisk organ in, they brought in an acoustician to really check the acoustics of the room and he said that if we put a wooden ceiling on the room, it would improve the acoustics dramatically.

And it did.

It's a birch plywood that's been stained to kind of match the rest of the wood in the church.

This building served, obviously, as the worship space.

The first piece of it was only this room in 1888.

Law Hall was added we use it is really a kind of a multi-purpose room.

It's a fellowship hall.

It's where we have our first service of Sunday morning is in there.

Over the years that room has been used by the community during the tuberculosis outbreak there were 75 people on cots in that fellowship hall being treated for tuberculosis.

So the church has always had this notion that it's here for more than itself, which is one of the great gifts of the DNA of this place.

They think about others almost before themselves we've had groups of people in there.

There were 300 people in there for a rally about science.

It's been used by Little Lambs as a as a location for their luncheon and fashion show.

So it's really been a great community space, and that's been built into the DNA of this congregation.

Jews began coming to Evansville in 1830 but nothing happened building wise until the late later.

1800s.

The Jewish congregation of Evansville dates back to 1857.

They originally founded is B'nai Israel.

There was an old temple in 1864 that was built on Sixth Street.

Later on into the turn of the century, the the main Jewish temple then is moved down on to Washington Avenue.

Harris & Shopbell.

They built that structure at the corner of Washington and eighth in 1903 and it was collegiate Gothic style.

The Washington Avenue Temple was classified as a reformed synagogue.

Most of those people that came here were originally from Europe, Eastern Europe, Germany, Poland, and that area.

The first Adath Israel was conservative, Adath Israel itself was built on the corner of Sixth and Vine.

They built this brick building there were two floors, two stories, and a basement.

On the second floor.

There were Sunday school rooms.

Oh, where the kids would study.

I studied in that building.

Most of the people that came to Adath Israel from were from the areas around Russia.

Actually, my grandparents on both sides came from Latvia to this country.

The Jewish population was fairly sizable for places, and especially along the Ohio River.

But we were all close because we had to be a close knit community at one time.

The Jewish Merchants Main Street up one side on Main Street and on the other in the 1930s when the Klan began, there were problems at one time.

Well, several times a couple of times the Washington Avenue Temple was desecrated.

So was Adath Israel.

We have three Jewish cemeteries here and all of them have been desecrated at one time or another.

In the early 1950s we built a building in front of St Mary's on Washington Ave.

In 1980 with dwindling numbers.

The congregation ended up merging with the other one in town, Patchwork Evansville, took over the old building in 1983.

There was a fire there and it burned the old structure down.

They did, however, save the tower.

If you're walking down on Washington now, you can see it.

It's just the tower is still there but it's got a neat style to it and they kind of kept it for nostalgia.

Now the Jewish temple is out almost to Warrick County then, so you know they've moved over time and if you look when you come in to the lobby there at the current Jewish temple there, the stained glass from the prior temple is there is kind of like a freestanding sculpture over there in a new new architecture, different architecture than from what they had been in before.

So the windows probably wouldn't have really fit in, but but they still managed to reuse them to remember the prior synagogues.

Behind me on the at the top those were in Adath Israel.

And those were designed by young man Gerald G?n, whose family was a part of the original congregation in downtown.

Also behind me is it's the Torah.

Jews are the Torahs, and that's the covenant.

And this was in the small sanctuary and above that is what we call the ner tamid.

Let's see, eternal light in every city, every sanctuary you go into, every Jewish sanctuary has the eternal light.

In the large sanctuary, there's another eternal light.

And that one was in Washington Avenue, Temple there's a window right above you.

We moved it very carefully over here.

And above the door in here in the library are the the carvings that were on the altar at Washington.

Avenue Temple.

So we've implemented all these things that it's not fair to the older congregants like me and to the younger ones.

They have to know what we went through, what we did and how we did it.

But that's important for anything.

Old North is probably the oldest standing church building in Vanderburgh County.

It dates back to the 1830s.

That area between String Town and up where a Petersburg road meets string town was known as Mechanicsville.

Maybe someone had gone down to Evansville for church.

Maybe this person said, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to keep making it down to Evansville.

And someone else said, Why don't we build a meeting house here in Mechanicsville?

I don't imagine that the people here had a lot of money, but they had the two things they really needed to build a meeting house.

Everybody in the community pitched in and lent both their time and their considerable skill.

The other thing that was readily available was natural resources just down the hill.

Of course, we have Pigeon Creek and Pigeon Creek supplied the stones, which could be used as the foundation, and this area was very wooded and so there was sufficient timber.

Of course, there were mills to mill the lumber.

So the community went about building this meetinghouse, which at that time was called the Mechanicsville Meetinghouse.

The chapel there.

It's a simpler building since it was actually like a multipurpose building.

It didn't have the, you know, the high church architecture to it.

If you didn't know.

And, you know, the steeple on it there, you really, you know, it could be something else.

Where you can see something that is original is if you look up and see the beams in the rafters and you will notice that all of those are original, you can see their hand hewn.

And if you look you will see that all the weight bearing joints have mortise and tenon joints, which made it strong enough to hold up.

Obviously, nearly 190 years at this point.

What we assume would have been here in 1832 would have been pungent seats, certainly movable because you would use them for school, you would use them for church.

From the beginning this church was designated as nonsectarian was the term that was used, in other words, non-denominational.

We were undoubtedly served by circuit riders up until 1916.

We have oral history that indicates that we were a stop on the Underground Railroad toward the end of the 1800s.

A public school was built right up the road.

At that time the public schools were segregated, so this building became a school for African-American children.

A little later in the 1800s, the use of this building was transferred to the Methodist Episcopal Church.

By that time, the Methodists were the main group that were using it the congregation continued to grow.

By 1925 there were 125 members also.

About that time the leaders of this church decided on a name change.

They decided to call it Old North.

Even by that time it was nearly 100 years old.

The windows were added later after it was no longer being used as a school and they were added over a number of years.

They were all windows that came from other churches and as we found them and maybe as we could afford them, they were added by about the mid 1900s.

It was bursting at the seams.

There would be as many as 150 people here.

So at that time the congregation decided to build what we have called for many years the new church which was completed in 1954.

We have continued to treasure this building and we use it for special services.

Sometimes weddings are held here and we frequently have special services during Lent and during Advent here in the chapel.

I can just imagine how proud those citizens of Mechanicsville must have been in 1832 when they finished this building and had here in their own community a place where they could worship in a place where their children could be educated I think people are proud of just having, having a church where people have been worshiping for nearly 200 years now.

There is something that feels sacred about that kind of space.

Saint Paul Episcopal was another downtown church with the residential area in Riverside.

They dated back to 1836.

The church was started by Bishop Kemper.

He was a missionary bishop who went all around the Midwest and started different congregations for the Episcopal Church.

At the time the bishop gathered people together and asked them if they wanted to become a congregation, and then they started that process, became an official congregation here so our congregation was one of those congregations that was formed in 1836 and then around 1838 they broke ground here with a the first building.

And that first building was here until the 1880s when it was raized in a new building that was larger, built with limestone.

And that was done by the Reid Brothers, the famous architects in town.

They built it on the same lot.

Then it used Bedford Limestone and they had a contrasting line, some that they built in and make a nice light and dark theme going with it.

The sanctuary in itself is Gothic style, and you, as you walk in you see these great arches.

It's got that church architecture the same thing there.

What you get in the 19th century.

There's something about the Gothic architecture because it was designed like this, right to lift your your gaze up.

So we're no longer focusing on ourselves.

But I would say the transcendent.

We're focusing on God and this great story of Jesus.

And so you see that all around the sanctuary with the stained glass that tell the story of Jesus, a tell the story of our history.

And that story informs who we are.

And then we are sent out from here to live that kind of life in our community that has the rose window in the background just a beautiful, beautiful church so there's a cross on top of the steeple and that cross was lit.

And I wonder how exactly they did this.

But apparently for seamen, as they were coming along the Ohio River, it was the first light that they were able to see in the bend to let them know that they're coming up towards Evansville.

That was one of those things that was was really important in that early architecture like that.

And to the steeple, apparently.

And the bells were important.

You know, even if you got out in the country, then, you know, it was one of those where the bells announced when something was happening, you could look out and see where the church was.

The rest of the city wasn't that tall.

And a lot of places there when churches, you know in the early 1800s especially were being built there wasn't things around there to block there.

So you know, you wanted something that stood out where people knew there's the church.

The church added a few additions over the years in the 1890s they built a parish hall kind of behind it.

We went through the flood right so we're right on the river and so the flood did a lot of damage inside.

We had everything checked out and then about a year later, after everything had been rebuilt after the flood there was a huge fire.

In 1938.

They had a fire that apparently gutted the church.

There's a great story that tells the, the baptismal font that was in the middle of the sanctuary fell through the floor during the fire and but it's remained intact.

In fact we still use it today.

Just kind of cool So apparently there was one of the first integrated services here and St. Paul's, it was with the folks that were with the civilian Conservation Corps.

It was a primarily it was an African-American unit and they requested from the church that they'd be able to meet here.

Apparently they were meeting the chaplain at 6:00 in the morning.

Well, when some people heard this from our diocese, they were pretty unhappy with us.

So part of what the rector did at that time is the rector said, Well, okay, you can't you're not allowed to meet separately at our building.

Why don't you come to church with us?

Apparently, during World War Two, we're so close to Camp Breckenridge, a number of times the soldiers would come up here during the weekend.

So many times they had time off for the USO to be able to go to parties and dances, etc.

Sometimes they weren't able to make it back and so apparently they set up camp beds and camp cots in our space and the women of the church make breakfast for them.

So there's such an interesting connections between all these different parts of our community.

Our congregation primarily is a worshiping congregation on Sunday morning.

So when you see us, you see us kind of in two different places in our sanctuary or a chapel where we worship together.

And in this room, which is Bob Hall, where we eat together with not being able to always worship in our building, it's caused us to reflect on what our building is here for and what we desire it to be here for.

And we really desire to be part of this community.

So whether we're talking about our food pantry or our meals or gathering our community together for our food and fellowship or worshiping together those are all made possible by this physical space.

And so what we're there, we're talking about being kind to one another, helping one another, figuring out how do we solve systemic ills in our community?

It comes from that being in this place that helps inform our faith so that we can live it out for the.

Good of the World.

The congregation was formed on July 21st 1889.

It started as German evangelical.

At some point, the evangelical and the reformed churches merged.

So it was evangelical and reform.

A week later, they adopted the name of Saint Lucas, and within a year they were starting to build.

They were one of the few churches that had enough money or wealth to build the church immediately versus waiting like a lot of them did.

They started out with less than 50 members in the church and made a huge commitment because they started out on July 21st, and by October 13th they'd purchased property and laid the cornerstone for the church by the 1940 and 1950s, the church had close to 1000 members They built the church building itself first, then they built the building across the street.

In 1907.

They built Lucas Hall in that kind of catty corner from the church.

I was a big kind of gymnasium hall that they could have a lot of activities in They hired a famed local architect, Frank Schlotter.

He built the church in the Gothic style, the Gothic revival style.

It's got a little bit more of the European look the architecture there.

Inside there it was built for a German congregation.

If you go to most of the, the churches that were originally German, doesn't matter what denomination there were the cornerstones the church name over the front door and stuff is still all in German.

Their services were in German up until 1917, the First World War.

They discontinued services for a short time out of respect, out of Patriot ism, and then brought them back.

They were doing services once a month in English until the 1930s, and that's when things kind of switched in their main services, then became English The inside of the church has changed considerably.

The pipes for the organ were in front where the altar is and that was changed sometime in the thirties.

There's been several different frescoes here and now as you can see, it's very, very blank when the pipes for the organ were there, there was a different fresco.

That's the original fresco.

My German is very rusty, but in English this is the God is in his holy temple.

Let all the earth be silent before him.

Our beautiful stained glass windows.

They were installed in 1911 1943.

The stained glass windows and several windows in the parish hall in parsonage were damaged during a hailstorm when the flood happened.

This is where the radio station broadcast.

This was the military came here to use our church for their base to reach out to to folks.

These are the same pews they've been using since 1889.

This is the same set up, same structure that they've been using for 130 years.

We have our family needs center that kind of started with Lucas Place.

The people who come to Lucas Place who live at Lucas Place often arrive with very few things.

So they needed clothing, bedding, these sort of things.

And I see people and it fills my heart to see because this is all volunteer and the women come.

It's like a whole store up there.

They've got it all set up and I see people going out with just mammoth bags in tears saying, I got everything I needed you know, Jesus to feed my sheep.

And that's what we do.

And because of that, this church is going strong many years after we can continue on for a few more years doing as we're doing, trying to just hold on, or we can decide to dedicate ourselves completely to being followers of Christ and to Luke six 35, which is give without asking for something in return.

They're very proud, very, very proud of their heritage.

They're very, very proud of everything that they have have done here and continue to do here.

Their dedication to community is still very strong I'm the first female settled pastor here.

We were the first church to become open and reform and affirming here in Evansville, and they are very proud of that.

It was difficult, but we believe in in a radical welcome for all of God's people and all people are God's people.

The congregation and the church and religion kind of extends beyond the building structure.

But they are intrinsically tied a lot of times.

Because of, you know, what we stood for, what the building and the edifice stood for, the houses of the people of God.

People have respected this edifice and this church.

My heritage is goes back a long way My parents were involved, my grandparents were involved, my whole family.

So I just want the world to know that we have existed before.

We exist now and we will exist later.

For many people, there is a attachment here that goes from generations.

I think a good church they get and they don't just focus on services.

They try and look to the community and what the needs of that community are.

Churches cannot exist for themselves.

It must exist to work in the community in which they find themselves.

All of our congregations work together to try to help make sure that everybody is fed.

And to me, I love that way.

Of working together across different lines, domination lines, religious lines, so that we can feed our community.

We're very fortunate this building stands today.

There were enough people who felt that there was something special in a building that carried the memories and the heritage of people worshiping in this space, that it was preserved.

This program is made possible in part by a grant from Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations, other production support for Historic Churches of Evansville was provided by David Mathews and viewers like you.Thank you.