Central Christian Church

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some buildings just stand there. They hold a roof up, keep the rain out, and that's about the size of it.

But every so often, a building carries a story in its very bones, and this one, right here in Bowie County, is one of those. This is Central Christian Church, and the story starts back in 1883. That's when the congregation was founded, with the Reverend J.

C. Mason serving as its first pastor. A community of faith, just getting its footing in Texas soil.

They carried on for years, building something you can't see in bricks and mortar, building a congregation. Then came 1932. Time to build something you could actually touch.

Now, the man they put in charge of the construction was no outside contractor brought in from elsewhere. He was one of their own. E.

C. Seibert, architect and church member, born in 1878, and he brought something to this project that you don't find on any blueprint. He brought intention.

Seibert used carefully placed bricks, and I want you to sit with that word, carefully, because it means he was making decisions, brick by brick, to achieve a distinctive pattern. This wasn't slapping up four walls and calling it done. When you stand back and look at what he created, the style is Tudor Gothic Revival.

A basilica-plan sanctuary, with cast-stone details worked into the facade. Pointed-arch windows that pull your eye upward the moment you step inside. And connecting the main sanctuary to an educational wing, a pointed-arch arcade, tying the whole thing together like a sentence that knows exactly how it wants to end.

E. C. Seibert passed in 1941, but what he raised here in 1932 is still standing.

A congregation founded in 1883, a building born in 1932, and every one of those carefully placed bricks still right where he put them.

What the marker says

Founded in 1883 with the Rev. J. C. Mason as first pastor, the Central Christian Church congregation built this structure in 1932. Construction was supervised by architect and church member E. C. Seibert (1878-1941), who used carefully placed bricks to achieve a distinctive pattern. Of Tudor Gothic Revival style, the basilica-plan sanctuary with cast-stone details and pointed-arch windows is connected to an educational wing by a pointed-arch arcade. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1987