DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm tellin' it to you. Way back before Kerrville had a church of its own to call home, the Presbyterians did something you don't see every day. They shared.
They pulled up a pew right alongside the other denominations in a Union Church, everybody under one roof, working it out together. That's a kind of Texas neighborliness worth noting. But a congregation can only borrow space for so long before it needs a place to stand on its own.
In 1888, that congregation was formally organized, and that same year they put up a small wooden church to make it official. Modest, practical, the kind of building that says we are here and we mean it. Now, that little wooden church served its purpose, but Kerrville had ambitions, and so did this congregation.
By 1923, they replaced it. Not with something modest. With something that stops you in your tracks.
The sanctuary they built is Beaux Arts style, and it does not apologize for that. Out front, a monumental two-story wooden entry rises up, flanked by Doric columns, crowned with a classical pediment, and dressed in decorative details that say somebody thought long and hard about every inch of this building. And then there are the windows.
Large arched stained glass windows that catch the Hill Country light and do something altogether different with it. From a shared pew in a borrowed church, to a small wooden building, to this. That's the whole arc of the story, right there on one corner in Kerrville.
What the marker says
Presbyterians in Kerrville shared a Union Church with other denominations before a congregation was formally organized in 1888. A small wooden church built that year was replaced by this structure in 1923. Prominent features of the Beaux Arts style sanctuary include a monumental two-story wooden entry with flanking Doric columns, classical pediment and decorative details, and large arched stained glass windows. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1987