| Additional Information: | A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, State Historic Preservation Office.
Two-story Prairie School church built in 1916 with hipped roof, ribbon windows, horizontal planes, and advancing wings and constructed with red brick.
Wisconsin is well-known for its Prairie School houses, but Prairie churches are rare. In fact, had it not been for an accident of timing, this church would probably have looked more traditional. In 1898, several years before Prairie architecture came into vogue, foundation work began for a stone and brick church. The congregation suspended construction when the Wisconsin Central Railroad, one of the city’s major employers, closed its repair shops here, creating economic uncertainty. Nearly twenty years later, when the congregation decided again that it needed a larger church, it chose this Prairie design by Clare Hosmer of Milwaukee. Local contractor B. V. Martin built the three-story structure.
Symmetry reigns, save for the canopied entrance with blind windows at one side. The central section rises like an arrow, with its own hipped roof, supported by brick pilasters, jutting above the main roofline. Prairie buildings often juxtaposed upward motion with the building’s horizontal massing. Below the roof, banks of leaded-glass windows suggest an abstract cross: a ribbon of tall, narrow openings with small rectangular attic windows runs across a shaft shaped by the two pilasters and a short string of sashes inset at the bottom. Hipped-roofed pavilions project from the plane of the wall. Each features a column of rectangular shapes, which alternatively project and recede from the plane. A pseudo-Georgian announcement board adds a discordant note at the front. |
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| Bibliographic References: | NELSON, WENDELL. "FROM AN ETERNAL FAITH, A GIFT OF TIMELESS ART: THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF STEVENS POINT, WISCONSIN." STEVENS POINT, 2005.
STEVENS POINT DAILY JOURNAL. 4/15/1916, P. 10; 4/24/1916, P. 1.
Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript. |
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