Epworth United Methodist Church
- Architects
- Frederick B. Townsend Thielbar and Fugard
- Year
- 1890
- Style
- Romanesque Revival
- City
- Chicago, IL
Epworth United Methodist Church is an 1891 Romanesque Revival church in Edgewater, built on land donated in 1886 by John Lewis Cochran, the neighborhood's founder. Parishioner Frederick B. Townsend designed the building, notable for exterior walls of brown, rusticated boulders.
the building
Boulder walls. The church's exterior is built of brown, rusticated boulders floated south down Lake Michigan from Wisconsin, giving the Romanesque design a rugged, quarried texture.
1930 enlargement. The original building, designed by parishioner Frederick B. Townsend in the early 1890s, was enlarged in 1930 by the architecture firm Thielbar and Fugard.
the style
Townsend worked in the Romanesque Revival mode, using heavy rough-cut stone -- here brown fieldstone boulders rather than smooth ashlar -- to give the small parish church a fortress-like solidity.
More on Romanesque Revivalthe architect
Frederick B. Townsend was a member of the congregation who designed the original church; its 1930 enlargement was carried out by the firm Thielbar and Fugard.
significance
Epworth was the second church built in Edgewater, after the Episcopal Church of the Atonement in 1889. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, designated a Chicago Landmark on June 21, 2023, and held its final service on May 15, 2022.
nearby
- Uptown Theatre
- Aragon Ballroom
- Myron Bachman House
- Mutual Insurance Building
- Graeme Stewart Public School Building
- (Former) Lyman Trumbull Public School Building