Fort Street Presbyterian Church
516 W. Hopkins St., San Marcos, TXBuilt in 1901 in Gothic style, Fort Street Presbyterian Church is one of only two San Marcos churches to survive without damaging alterations. The design is vernacular but elegant. Victorian-period detail inside and out beautifies the simple building, which is credited to local craftsmen.
During its years of service, the Fort Street Church housed three different denominations.
Members of the Cumberland branch of the Presbyterian Church had organized a congregation in San Marcos by the 1860s. By 1892 the group had built a sanctuary on Fort Street, now West Hopkins. Shortly thereafter this burned, but was rebuilt perhaps in the original design, within the year. Samuel Blue Bales, overseer of the construction of the Texas State Capitol and a church elder, and John Cape, a ginner and postmaster, are said to have been the contractors. Will Barber was a major financier. Central Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. became the name in 1912. Six years later, a loose federation with the First Presbyterian Church took the Cumberland congregation from its sanctuary. The structure was not completely abandoned. The owners returned occasionally for private gatherings and in 1925 the Literary Clubs of San Marcos were permitted to use it as a lending library. In 1929 the federation dissolved and the congregation returned, only to turn over the building in 1940 to the First American Lutheran Church. The First Pentecostal Holiness Church used the structure after 1969. Recent years have seen the church vacant.
Bibliography
San Marcos Daily Record, Golden Anniversary Issue, 1962.
Frances Stovall, "Cumberland Presbyterian Church," a condensation of material in a notebook belonging to Tula Townsend Wyatt. Unpublished, July 1, 1982. On file at the San Marcos Public Library.
Interview with Clara Louise Cape, June 24, 1982.
Interview with Kathryn Rich, June, 1982.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.