First United Methodist Church

The First United Methodist Church, completed in 1902, is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places at the local level of significance in the area of Architecture, as an excellent example of an intact Gothic Revival church. The site-fired brick church was built according to plans drawn by builder Richard C. Cassidy and includes nineteen stained-glass windows fabricated in Bavaria. The church, constructed in 1901-1902 with additions completed in 1922, 1953, 1968, and 1998, occupies the original site purchased by the congregation in 1858. The property has been continuously occupied by the Methodist Church, the first and oldest continuing congregation established in Crockett (1839). The 1902 church, which replaced an earlier and more modest wood-framed structure, is most closely related to the Gothic Revival architectural style and is an exemplar of the Neomedieval Auditorium Church type. This church type, as defined by recent religious scholarship, was especially popular among Evangelical Protestant congregations at the turn of the twentieth century, and is commonly found in the American south. The formal development of the Neomedieval Auditorium Church type was a direct result of various trends in theology, ecclesiology, mission, and social identity.

Typically, in such a church, the exterior recalls medieval revival styles, usually loosely adapted Gothic Revival or Romanesque Revival, and exhibits monumental proportions, ornament, and siting; the interior often does not follow a prescribed medieval revivalist model but rather is organized as a theater-inspired auditorium model that prioritizes clear sight-lines, good acoustics, and comfort. The First Methodist Church in Crockett exemplifies the Neomedieval Auditorium Church type in its masonry-clad Gothic Revival exterior - complete with buttresses, massive corner tower, and pointed-arch stained glass windows - executed in combination with a broadly proportioned, radially-organized interior featuring smooth plastered walls accented by wainscoting, a wood-clad ceiling, curved pews, and minimal interior obstructions.

The First Methodist Church complex currently is comprised of six components (including the Family Life Center, completed in 1998), connected both internally and by a series of exterior covered walks. The main church building represents the first and primary core of the complex. An Education Annex was appended in 1922. In 1953, Houston architect Harvin Moore designed the addition of a Fellowship Hall with an adjoining classroom wing. Two final components were added to the complex over a three-decade period: a two-story Education Building, completed in 1968, and the Family Life Center erected in 1998. In accordance with the National Park Service guidelines, this property is counted as a single unit, as it represents "a building or structure with attached ancillary structures, covered walkways, and additions." The First Methodist Church is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places at the local level of significance in the area of Architecture, as an excellent and intact example of Neomedieval Auditorium Church.

The architectural significance of this building is based upon the quality design of the 1902 sanctuary. with its 1922 Annex; the 1953 addition of the Fellowship Hall and classroom wing further contributes to the significance of this complex, as an exemplar of postwar modern design compatible with the original church and executed programmatically to further the church's continued mission of community outreach and education. Subsequent building components, while outside of the period of significance, are compatible with the design idea, functional intent, aesthetic, and quality of the historic components of the church complex. The period of significance for the First Methodist Church stretches from 1901, the year construction commenced, to 1953 (the end of the significant period of construction).

Crockett, a brief community history

Houston County, the first county established under the Republic of Texas in 1837, is located in the midst of the East Texas Timberlands, approximately 100 miles east of Waco. Having known human presence as early as 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, the region was first explored by Europeans in the 1680s (René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle), by which time settlements of the Alabama-Coushatta, Cherokee, and Tejas Indians were well-established. The first Spanish mission in East Texas was founded in 1690 in the northeastern area of the future Houston County. In subsequent decades, and as early as the 1720s, the county was traversed by key trade routes, including the Old San Antonio Road. The first non-native permanent settlers arrived in 1821, and, in 1828 the earliest recipients of the Mexican land grants settled just ten miles northeast of the future site of Crockett. The town of Crockett was created on land donated by an early settler from Tennessee, Andrew Edwards Gossett (1812-1890)." The town, named after Texas hero Davy Crockett, was incorporated in 1837 and became the county seat of the newly formed Houston County.

Under Mexican rule between 1820 and 1836, the Timberlands region was tightly controlled. American settlement was prohibited after 1839, and Protestant worship was illegal. After the establishment of the Republic of Texas in 1836, settlers began to arrive in growing numbers; however, settlement was severely limited by frequent conflict with local Native American tribes. Accordingly, in 1838 Crockett was home to only a simple log-fortified courthouse, erected by local builder John Jacob Erwin. Amidst such conflicts, the courthouse served a protective as well as governmental function." In 1848, shortly after Texas was admitted as the twenty-eighth state in the United States (1846), the log courthouse was deemed inadequate for the county seat. By 1851, this prompted a successful appeal for legislation that would levy taxes towards the construction of a new courthouse on the public square on Houston and Main Streets (later Goliad Street). The new courthouse was to be erected in brick, a more permanent and fire-proof building material. By 1854, Crockett had grown considerably; the town had become a stagecoach station and had the first telegraph in the region. Immigration increased dramatically as violent conflicts became rare, and an influx of slave-holding Americans from the southern states boosted the population before the Civil War. By 1860, prosperity was largely based on a cotton plantation economy. Still, Crockett remained the only town in this sparsely populated county; in 1860 Houston County inhabitants numbered just 8,058, including 2,819 slaves. When the Civil War began, the county voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Union; Texas did so statewide on 1 February 1861." Within Houston County, approximately 1,000 men (out of less than 6,000 whites) joined the Confederate forces.

The turmoil of the Civil War and the postwar effects of abolition upon plantation economies resulted in a sustained downturn for Houston County. Confederate troops gathered and trained in Crockett during the war, and in 1865, a major fire destroyed much of the town, including the courthouse. A new courthouse, of wood frame construction, was completed by 1871. The downturn began to abate only in 1872, with the coming of the Houston and Great Northern Railroad. With this newfound access to remote parts of the state, Houston County's population doubled in the 1870s (to 19,360), agriculture developed (cotton, accompanied by corn), the ranching industry grew, and a thriving lumber industry spurred new prosperity. On 2 November 1882, a second courthouse fire destroyed the public square; Waco architect W. C. Dodson was commissioned to design a replacement. The larger, more monumental edifice was to be constructed of locally-burned and crafted brick. By the mid-1880s, Crockett was populated by 1,200 people. The town had a newspaper, a bank, a hotel, multiple schools, an opera house, and several churches, including Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian." The Houston County population reached 24,432 by 1900.

Religious Community in Crockett

The Catholic missionary presence, well-established under Mexican rule, gradually faded during the Republic of Texas. Under Mexican law in the 1820s and 1830s, Protestant practice was prohibited; this ban was generally observed by institutional Protestant denominations in that they did not send formally sponsored missionaries nor establish congregations. Despite this prohibition, individual preachers and families came and settled sporadically. The first Protestant preacher to hold services in Texas was a Methodist: William Stevenson had come from Tennessee as early as 1815 and preached at Pecan Point, near Clarksville in Red River County. A congregation was organized there but no church was built. After a few isolated and secret camp meetings and preaching efforts of other Methodists, in 1833, William's son James P. Stevenson covertly formed what has become the oldest continuously active Protestant (and Methodist) congregation in Texas, also at Pecan Point. At the time, it was merely called a "religious society." In 1832, Methodist preacher Needham J. Alford (along with Presbyterian Summer Bacon) held the first camp meeting in East Texas, near present-day Milam. Their presence was not welcomed, and they were confronted by a resident with a bullwhip. A sheer standoff avoided any physical conflict, and shortly thereafter the Mexican Colonel Piedras, posted in Nacogdoches, received inquiries about the incident.
Piedras replied with instructions to leave the Protestants alone. With at least a hint of tolerance, a group of Protestants erected a church in 1834, near San Augustine. This church, now known as McMahan's Chapel, was the first Protestant - and Methodist - church in Texas.

The spread of Protestantism into the region thus began with covert illegal missionary activity and progressed to begrudging tolerance with McMahan's Chapel. With the establishment of the Republic of Texas (1836), Protestant worship was increasingly encouraged. Indeed, in 1835, Colonel Travis had already made a public appeal for Protestant ministers, and especially Methodists, to settle the area. Mid-nineteenth-century religious life in Houston County was marked by the frontier ethos of circuit riders and itinerant preachers, prominent among which were Littleton Fowler (1803-1846) and John Andrew Box (1803-1874). Both men would eventually become involved in the founding of the First Methodist Church of Crockett, with Fowler as Presiding Elder and Box as an original founding member. The earliest church meetings were held regularly in members' homes; this was accompanied by the widespread camp meeting tradition that held revivals and other religious services in temporary encampments among tree groves (this practice reached East Texas in 1832). The earliest efforts to provide a more permanent architectural setting for religious practice in all of Houston County began in Crockett.

As settlement proceeded, areas to the south and west tended to hold out in hostility to Protestantism the longest. The founding in 1839, just two years after the county and the city were founded, of the Methodist church in Crockett thus reflects this trajectory. Other churches followed their lead. The earliest openly-established congregations in Crockett met initially in members' homes or in outdoor camp settings. With the exception of the Episcopal parish, all religious congregations in Crockett (and in the county) from the beginning were representative of the broadly Evangelical Protestant wing of Christian religious conviction and practice. The earliest history of all congregations in Crockett is marked by ecumenical cooperation and joint efforts at establishing unity across denominations, as is evidenced in part by shared worship spaces and the 1870 Revival Meeting jointly held by the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists. Though the Methodist congregation was the first to form in 1839, it was followed as early as 1846 by the First Baptist Church of Crockett, now at 801 East Goliad. This Baptist congregation built their first permanent church building in 1874 at North Seventh Street and East Houston." Episcopalians were in Crockett by 1850, though the congregation of All Saints Episcopal Church was established in 1864 and built a church shortly thereafter, only to be lost in an 1867 fire. This congregation was quickly followed in 1854 by the establishment of the First Presbyterian Church of Crockett, which, prior to 1870, held services in a house on North Fourth Street.

Though the Baptist Church was present in Crockett in its earliest days, the Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, 900 North Sixth Street, first met together for worship under a brush arbor on the property of the first pastor, the Rev. Phillip Burrell, and finally constructed its first permanent church in 1894. The final notable congregation to form in Crockett in the nineteenth century was the First Christian Church of Crockett (Disciples of Christ), now located at 200 Gordon Drive; this church was first located across from First United Methodist Church on what is now the corner of Goliad and Seventh Streets; as the Methodist Church was erecting its new sanctuary, a new wood-frame Christian church was simultaneously completed. Many of these buildings were erected along what was then Church Street (now South Seventh Street) or along Main Street (now Goliad) or Public Street to form the core of Crockett's religious community.

Beginning with the formation of the first permanent congregation in Crocket, the Methodist in 1839, endeavors to create a permanent infrastructure were intimately tied to educational aims and programs, including the establishment of schools." The establishment of religious and educational facilities was supported in part by quasi-religious secret fraternities, most especially the Masons, among which were the founders and leaders of the Methodist congregation in Crockett. Indeed, while Freemasonry had become established in the United States only by 1820 and the first Masonic lodge in Texas was formed in 1835 (Holland Lodge No. 36, near Brazoria), by 1845 there were twenty-four lodges in the state with a membership of 357. While this number represented just one and one-half percent of the state's population at the time, roughly eighty percent of the public offices were filled by Masons, and similar presence across civic and community leadership would remain a hallmark of Masonic identity until the 1960s.

Furthermore, Crockett's first secret order of any kind was its Masonic lodge established in 1845, and the leaders therein generally were the leading citizens of the town and the county for the succeeding century. Equally pertinent to the early social history of the area is the concentrated focus Masons gave to educational efforts. Protestant, and especially Methodist, ideas of mission and identity naturally served to nourish such efforts and would mark the form and nature of their architecture. Beyond the simple overlap of membership between church and lodge leadership, which was common enough across Protestant denominations at the time, Littleton Fowler, the Methodist Presiding Elder at the Crockett Church's founding in 1837, was also elected that same year Chaplain to the Texas Senate and, in 1838, Grand Chaplain of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Texas. While no direct evidence of its significance has surfaced, the Masonic triangle featured prominently in brick in the blind windows at the top of the north and west façades of the First United Methodist Church may indicate a public acknowledgment of the local connections between Freemasonry and Methodist Christianity.

Methodists in Crockett

While Methodists were among the first settlers and therefore major leaders in Crockett, the subsequent history of the congregation, the city, and the county demonstrates not only the close ties between the congregation and the surrounding community but also the significance such Evangelical Protestant identity had for the region and its inhabitants. Indeed, as historian Armistead Aldrich wrote: "The history of these churches is almost synonymous with a history of the county," and the "pioneer" congregation was the First Methodist Church in Crockett. A particularly palpable episode portrays the way in which the congregation and the community have been intertwined: on the matter of raising money to build the Methodist's brick church in 1901, the non-Methodist editor of the local newspaper led the way with public appeals for all to contribute, as the new church would be an "ornament" to the entire town. This was in part the natural outgrowth of the fact that the Methodist congregation was indeed the very first in Crockett. As it continued to grow and thrive, it achieved and maintained a certain social prominence within the community. A similar prominence of Methodists in Texas extended beyond the particularities of Crockett or Houston County: in 1850 of the 328 church buildings in the state, over 52% of which were owned by Methodists (173), with the Baptists having less than half that amount (70), and the remaining divided across other denominations."

Active mission work and community efforts that Methodists shared with fellow citizens nourished and expanded the church's prominence. The tradition of service and mission work began in Crockett with Littleton Fowler, a prominent Methodist minister and missionary, who helped found many churches in Texas including Crockett (1839), Nacogdoches (1838), and most importantly, in San Augustine (1838), which is generally considered the first Protestant church in Texas. With these activities, Fowler was instrumental in encouraging the growth of Methodism in the South. He served as the Presiding Elder at the Methodist Church at Crockett in 1839, was elected Chaplain to the Texas Senate the same year, and was elected Grand Chaplain of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Texas the following year. When rifts developed over the matter of slavery and the impending Civil War, Fowler submitted the resolution to the Methodist Conference that would formally separate the Methodist Episcopal Church into two bodies in 1844. In 1838, Fowler licensed Henderson Palmer to preach, and Palmer became the first Methodist licensed to preach in Texas; the following year, he became the first pastor of the First Methodist Church in Crockett.

Shortly after his appointment in 1839, Palmer organized a small church for the community at Shiloh, about ten miles north of Crockett. A decade later, in 1848, a log house was built to serve as a church and school. Services were also held under brush arbors, and the site remained a place of frequent and regular camp meetings, summer camps, and the like well into the twentieth century." Revivals and camp meetings were events that would continue to be a hallmark of Methodist practice throughout the South, yet these were also not restricted to Methodist participation. In fact, a major revival in Crockett in 1870 was organized and held jointly by the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists.

Piecemeal notices in the Crockett Weekly Courier, the local newspaper, give a flavor of the prominence and active role the congregation played in the community from its inception. In October 1890 a Knights of Pythias lodge was established in Crockett, and the Reverend Littleton Fowler was listed among the members. A September 1890 notice celebrated the impending arrival that week of the Methodist Episcopal Church's new organ, noting its reputation as the most powerful reed organ ever made and claiming that it would be larger by several inches than the largest organ ever shipped into the country." In the summer of 1891, the second annual Houston County Sabbath School Convention was held at the First Methodist Church in Crockett, involving many denominations as well as representatives of union church schools.

Such markers of community involvement have continued throughout the long life of the congregation. In particular, in the years following World War II and particularly by 1967, the church was involved in the planning, leadership, and launch of a community effort to offer preschool opportunities to low-income children, called the Lift Center." Recently, in 2001, the congregation took over the care of the Old Shiloh Church. While information is lacking regarding a complete social history of the Methodist congregation and its members, many significant Crockett citizens were prominent in the First Methodist Church. Thus, aside from particular individuals whose roles are outlined elsewhere in the course of relating the establishment and development of the church, citizens such as James Elbert Downs (1845-1917)," James William Madden (1856-1936), and Henry Jackson Berry (1892-1959) have served vital roles both in the church and in the community."

First United Methodist Church: Establishment and Early Years

The forefather of the Crockett Methodist congregation was John Andrew Box, a Methodist circuit preacher who came with his extended family to Texas in 1835. Box purchased a head right the following year to the southwestern portion of what would become Crockett and settled there in the summer of 1837 (after having fought at San Jacinto with Sam Houston). In the same year, the Methodist Conferences in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Michigan commissioned missionaries to Texas; Littleton Fowler was among the newly commissioned. Fowler hailed from Tennessee and was assigned to a region that included Houston County. He secured an appointment for a new Methodist congregation in Crockett in December 1839 and set out to establish the first church in the town. Fowler had also been elected the Grand Chaplain of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Texas in 1837 and became a Presiding Elder that same year in the newly formed First Methodist Church of Crockett. John Box was among the first members of the church, and Henderson D. Palmer (from Alabama) became the first Pastor.

The young church purchased its first and only property in 1858, on the southeast corner of what was then Main Street (now Goliad) and Church Street (now South Seventh Street). Prior to this purchase, services were held in members' homes or, for a time, in a "union church" (across Seventh Street from the present church, the southwest corner of the intersection) that the Methodists shared with congregations of other denominations. In 1864, the Methodist congregation constructed a small wood-frame building on its property. The small church was painted white and featured swinging kerosene lamps, wood stoves, and a pump organ in the interior.

By 1901, the congregation had grown to be the second-largest in town, with 239 members; the wood-frame church had become inadequate. Crockett's total population at the time was just 2,000, and the local significance of the church was acknowledged when the editor of the Crockett Courier, W. B. Page, publicly appealed to the citizenry as early as 1897 to support the building of the much-needed new church. At the time the relative populations of comparable local churches were Baptists with 250, Presbyterians with 85, and Christian Church with 30." The appeal was not merely to the need of the Methodists, but to the welcome value of an attractive, substantial, well-built and even "handsome, stylish, up-to-date" church. It was repeatedly described as an "ornament to the city. The Methodist minister, the Rev. A. S. Whitehurst, similarly appealed to his fellow citizens for help by promising that "when our sister denominations decide to build, why of course Methodists will in turn assist. Good church houses are public benefactions... After such public and passionate appeal on the part of Page, a building committee was formed in 1897. The eventual result was the 1902 church as it stands today, with a seating capacity of 500. The original wood-frame church building was moved across Goliad Street and used there while the new brick church was under construction. The old church was then sold to a local builder, John Clark, who re-used the materials for houses on Bell Street."

Building and Expanding the Church

The 1902 church was designed and erected under the supervision of local builder Richard Cassidy." As a congregation with the deepest ties to the history of Crockett, the Methodists desired a building that would clearly embody the ethos of the Evangelical Protestant Methodist theology and practice. Loosely employed Gothic Revival forms were appropriated for their public and monumental value as exterior massing and as anchors in the cityscape. These were especially powerful markers of a successful church in the midst of the small town. The interior was not directly derived from such an exterior but instead was rather freely organized according to the dominant aims of the congregation and its denominational traditions. In the case of Methodism generally, as well as the First Methodist Church of Crockett specifically, this meant that in lieu of any longitudinal nave oriented towards processional liturgies and structured as a hierarchy, seating was conceived in an auditorium-seating arrangement. In this configuration, the primary sanctuary space is broader than it is deep, and is ordered around maximizing lines of sight, ease of hearing, and a focus upon preaching and worship."

Central to the ethos of the Methodist Church was not only the primacy of preaching over liturgical ritual but also the devotion to teaching, social activity, community service, and hospitality. The new church served the congregation well, as it immediately hosted the Texas Annual Conference on 3-8 December, 1902; this was a more significant event than regular Methodist Conferences because multiple Conferences were reunited into one. This event served as a fitting capstone to the congregations long-established tradition of hosting such denominational events, as the church had done so for the East Texas Annual Conferences in 1862, 1871, 1877, and 1888.

Within two decades the need for classrooms, recreation space, and a professional kitchen resulted in an expansion plan. The Education Annex, completed in 1922, was appended to the east end of the church and provided space for the church's expanding services. The actual prod to action came from a member of the congregation, Nettie Adams, who dramatically removed her diamond rings and placed them on the altar, challenging the rest to "get serious" about funding the project. Similarly, it was the women of the church who lobbied and fundraised for the inclusion of a basement with a kitchen in order to serve dinners and relative events." The Educational Annex continued the social and hospitality commitments of the church programmatically and architecturally, as it was built directly attached to the original church, in a form of language conducive with but subservient to that of the sanctuary. In fact, while there is no indication that the church sought to adopt the prominent Akron Plan for classroom design, the direct abutment of the education wing to the east wall of the original church suggests at least the idea of marking a strong connection between worship and education. As church and community growth continued, more space was needed. Three decades after the completion of the Education Annex, in 1953, the church commissioned the Houston architect (and descendent of an early pastor of the church) Harvin Moore to design a Fellowship Hall and additional classroom, kitchen, and nursery space. The new addition would further the mission of the church in light of its relationship to the growing town of Crockett. Moore, in addition to his family ties with the congregation, had established a solid reputation in partnership with Hermon Lloyd (1909-1989) based mainly on the many homes they designed for the River Oaks suburb of Houston. Moore and Lloyd had increasingly began to design commercial projects, often stemming from their residential contacts. The two dissolved the partnership prior to World War II, and Moore began to gather naval and other federal commissions throughout Texas. He also began to design churches and industrial buildings, and by the mid-1950s, embarked on historic preservation work."

Moore's architectural concept for the 1953 Fellowship Hall and classroom wing adopted the form language of a well-studied synthesis of ranch-style domestic building and modern school architecture. Furthermore, the church's focus on the community is encapsulated by the creation of these wings of an interior courtyard, the design of which offers a contemplative garden space within the multitude of surrounding activities.

In 1968, an additional Education Building was erected, expanding Sunday School and other services to the two-story facility. The Education building, sited on the west edge of the property, acts as closure to the internal courtyard and, architecturally, functions as a backdrop to the fore-grounded buildings completed in previous decades. Concurrently, the 1922 Education Annex was thoroughly remodeled at this time, including the transformation of the basement into a youth center. $4
Between 1976 and 78, a renovation of the interior of the 1902 church was undertaken. This effort focused upon reordering the eastern wall that contains the pulpit, choir, and organ. Work included the closure of an opening that was originally behind the pulpit, and the installation of new woodwork in this area, crafted by local carpenter and church member Homer Argall. More specifically, Argall's work included: refinishing the pews; sealing, repairing, and painting the ceiling: building a second table for the platform (to match the first and original table); closing the original wall behind the altar and filling it with the wood-paneled woodwork, the architectural form of which was modeled directly on the pew ends." In 1998, the Family Life Center -- a large multi-purpose space - was added directly to the south of the Education Building. This Center is arguably out of scale with the rest of the complex, and remains the least complimentary to the range of preceding architectural endeavors. However, it is also the furthest removed from the complex and so had minimal diminishing impact on the existing campus. The building has two floors: the ground floor contains a banquet room, kitchen facilities, and a gymnasium (with a stage for performances); the second floor houses a youth center and exercise facilities. The congregation encourages the Family Life Center's use not only by all parts of the church but also by everyone in the Crockett community. St
Form and Concept: The First United Methodist Church as a Neomedieval Auditorium Church
The ecclesiastical architecture of Evangelical Protestants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has only recently begun to receive adequate scholarly treatment. Such study that has been pursued, however, suggests that the standard Gothic Revival style is not adequate to account for the architectural and conceptual phenomena of church building. More to the point, when viewed only under the rubric of common revival style descriptors, many churches will inadequately understood. Yet the codification of a new typology or model would be misplaced if the actual factors behind the forms were not considered. In the case of churches like the First United Methodist Church in Crockett, another, more precise assignment of typology is the most accurate and appropriate: the Neomedieval Auditorium Church. While the term carries functional differences, it remains similar to the architectural or stylistic category of the Gothic Revival style. As a type, the Neomedieval Auditorium Church is characterized by the combination of two factors: 1) an exterior that is based on a medieval revival style, most commonly Gothic Revival or Romanesque Revival; and 2) an interior that is based on theater-inspired churches from the 1830s or meeting-house models formed as early as the sixteenth century, usually marked by centralized and unified plan organization, some version of amphitheater-style seating, a platform in lieu of a highly separated altar, maximization of sight lines, and good acoustics.

The emergence of the Neomedieval Auditorium Church as a widespread and influential model for Evangelical Protestant Denominations across the United States, mainly within the Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, and Presbyterian Churches, is most fully mapped by the work of Jeanne Halgren Kilde. Kilde's work is elaborated upon by Anne C. Lovelace and Otis B. Wheeler, with a distinct concern for what it implies for previously understudied twentieth-century Evangelical church architecture. The model appears in applied form and in specifically Methodist contexts in scholarship produced by Kenneth E. Rowe. The Neomedieval Auditorium Church as a type is also acknowledged, if not developed, in earlier standard works such as that of Peter Williams."

Briefly put, a revolution occurred in Evangelical Protestant church architecture in the United States during the closing decades of the nineteenth century that is rooted in both the experiments with theater churches during the 1830s and the more strident polemic surrounding Gothic Revival. The guiding ideas that animate the interior disposition of theater-inspired churches are taken up and combined with external forms loosely following medieval revival styles, most commonly Gothic but often enough Romanesque or an eclectic mixture of the two.
While the concept of the church as theater appealed mightily to many leaders of early nineteenth-century revivals and camp meetings, by mid-century the dominance of the Gothic Revival had supplanted most of what had been appealing." This was due to three overarching factors characteristic of most Evangelical Protestant denominations at the time. First, there was a renewed interest in proclaiming and embodying Christian unity across denominational divides, not only as a matter of forging a durable Protestant identity against the recent hegemony of Spanish or Mexican Catholicism but also, and especially, in light of the recent conflicts over slavery in the 1840s and 1850s." Second, the practice of architecture was becoming increasingly professionalized, in the context of which the dominant trend was to promote accuracy and propriety in revival styles. Finally, Evangelical Protestant denominations were also caught up in a sort of denominationalism, concerned primarily with growth and expansion and expressed through national denominational publications featuring church designs, among which Gothic Revival predominated. Thus, these three trends converge in the solid establishment by the 1860s of Gothic Revival as the proper style for Christian even Protestant church architecture.
As a style, the Gothic Revival had been promoted through earnest arguments concerning the propriety of medieval forms for Christian institutions, as in the mid-century published work of English Catholic architect A.W.N. Pugin, or the later efforts of the Anglo-Catholic Ecclesiologists, or as translated for regional settings (and materials) by the Episcopalian architect Richard Upjohn. However, the contexts in which these new denominations found themselves in the years following the Civil War provoked a shift in objectives, and the interior implications of such stylistic rigor were increasingly seen as inappropriate for Evangelical Protestant denominations. The matrix of social and ethical challenges that arose from the newly industrialized capitalism of the cities caused the middle class to flee the urban centers into rapidly growing suburbs. Large urban congregations followed and found that they needed to focus increasingly on communicating a sense of defensive refuge from a scary world even while engaging it anew through activism and community service. Thus, Neomedieval exterior forms (heavy masonry walls and piers, buttresses, Gothic or Romanesque ornament, etc.) still communicated "church" and refuge without being doctrinaire. The reclamation of the earlier, revival- and missionary-inspired auditorium church interior (centralized plan organization, theater seating focused upon a stage, good acoustics and sight lines, etc.) fostered a community identity and activism that was highly desired. Spurred and spread by denominational publications, the Neomedieval Auditorium Church was adopted by hundreds of congregations nationwide in the final decades of the nineteenth century.

Along with the adoption of the Neomedieval Auditorium Church as a popular typology for Evangelical Protestants, there was a shift in identity that found expression in a renewed primacy of worship (especially music), a sense of obligation to serve the needs of families (especially children and their education), and commitment to missionary approaches to church growth and revivals. These factors merge with the increasingly common view of the church campus as an analogue of the domestic home, complete with kitchens, multi-function rooms, and a place of refuge that would nourish efforts to serve the surrounding community.

This last development, the domestic and educational emphasis centered around worship and mission, found expression in the First United Methodist Church in Crockett from the 1902 church and through the various additions that together form a coherent campus. All the standard characteristics of the Neomedieval Auditorium Church, however, are present from the inception of the original 1902 sanctuary building. No direct evidence has been identified that would indicate specific sources for the design. However, the popularity of the type and the manner in which it was spread suggests the plausibility that the church's leaders would have been sufficiently aware of what was by then a well-established trend in Evangelical Protestant and especially Methodist church design. The adaptation of large auditorium church designs to rural and small town contexts began during the 1870s, and occurred largely through the published work of church architects or concerned preachers, or through denominational-sponsored publications. The Methodist Episcopal Church formed a department of architecture under the auspices of its national Board of Church Extension in 1875, and by the 1880s similar offices were established in the Methodist Episcopal South and other denominations. And, more generally, the coverage of nineteenth-century newspapers on these matters tended to highlight the questioned viability of Gothic Revival church interiors for Evangelical Protestant worship or to celebrate the advances brought by the return of the auditorium interior, often called the "audience room," and the attendant Neomedieval Auditorium synthesis.

The 1902 sanctuary building of the First Methodist Church in Crockett, therefore, is an important exemplar of a typology for Evangelical Protestant denominations that had by then become widespread. The building is not distinctive regarding the development of the typology but rather is a typical example that embodies the ethos of an important congregation (the first established church in Crockett and Houston County, continuously active since its inception in 1839). At this local and regional level, however, the building does display some noteworthy architectural characteristics, for small-town churches following the Neomedieval Auditorium type would frequently be much more modest, if only out of economic necessity. For example, the 1884 catalog published by the Methodist Board of Church Extension suggested that stained-glass windows could be approximated with the careful application of colored paper over clear glass, thereby still achieving the desired effect of soft, filtered light for a properly evangelical interior. W. T. Euster, one of the Methodist preachers mentioned above, wrote in 1908 that one may want to include "dummy pipes" in an organ installation to achieve a grander effect than a congregation could otherwise afford. In general, items such as curved pews were preferred but nonetheless relatively expensive, so many smaller congregations opted for straight pews arranged at angles. In all of these examples, the First United Methodist Church in Crockett was clearly elevated beyond the typical small-town congregation in their ability to marshal the resources to build their church. Thus, the First United Methodist Church sanctuary is important not only as a typical exemplar of a turn-of-the-century Neomedieval Auditorium Church type but also as an embodiment of an atypical leader among small-town Methodist congregations. In material terms, this is found in the high quality of the craftsmanship in every aspect of the church, from wood furnishings to brickwork, as well as the care with which these material works have been treated by church members for over a century.

Conclusion

The First United Methodist Church, completed in 1902, is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places at the local level of significance in the area of Architecture, as an excellent example of an intact Gothic Revival church, and more specifically as an exemplar of the Neomedieval Auditorium Church type. The site-fired brick church was built according to plans drawn by builder Richard C. Cassidy and includes nineteen stained-glass windows fabricated in Bavaria. The church, constructed in 1901-1902 with additions completed in 1922, 1953, 1968, and 1998, occupies the original site purchased by the congregation in 1858. The property has been continuously occupied by the Methodist Church, the first and oldest continuing congregation established in Crockett (1839).

The 1902 church, which replaced an earlier and more modest wood-framed structure, is most closely related to the Gothic Revival architectural style and is an exemplar of the Neomedieval Auditorium Church type. This church type, as defined by recent religious scholarship, was especially popular among Evangelical Protestant congregations at the turn of the twentieth century, and is commonly found in the American south. The formal development of the Neomedieval Auditorium Church type was a direct result of various trends in theology, ecclesiology, mission, and social identity. Typically, in such a church, the exterior recalls medieval revival styles, usually loosely adapted Gothic Revival or Romanesque Revival, and exhibits monumental proportions, ornament, and siting; the interior often does not follow a prescribed medieval revivalist model but rather is organized as a theater-inspired auditorium model that prioritizes clear sight-lines, good acoustics, and comfort. The First Methodist Church in Crockett exemplifies the Neomedieval Auditorium Church type in its masonry-clad Gothic Revival exterior - complete with buttresses, massive corner tower, and pointed-arch stained glass windows- executed in combination with a broadly proportioned, radially-organized interior featuring smooth plastered walls accented by wainscoting, a wood-clad ceiling, curved pews, and minimal interior obstructions. The 1902 church, and its subsequent additions, comprise a cohesive campus that retains integrity of location, setting, design, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association. As such, First United Methodist Church is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places at the local level of significance in the area of Architecture. The period of significance stretches from 1901, the year construction commenced, to 1953 (the end of the significant period of construction).