First United Methodist Church marks its founding year as 1850, when the Rev. Joseph Perkins Sneed, a circuit-riding Methodist minister, preached to the inhabitants of Waco Village at the foot of Jackson Street on the banks of the Brazos River. Legend has it he bedded down under a tree near the old river ford, where travelers crossed the waters in the years before the construction of the suspension bridge. Sleeping on his saddle blanket, the howling of wolves awakened the preacher just before dawn.
In the summer of 1851, Methodists built the first church structure in Waco. The building would also be used periodically by Baptists and Presbyterians, both forming congregations in the young village. Composed of oak and cedar wooden planks planed at a horse-drawn sawmill just south of the town, the original church stood at Second Street and Jackson Avenue.
In 1858, the congregation erected a new brick church at Franklin Avenue and Third Street. People reportedly traveled by wagon or horseback as far as 100 miles to attend the dedicatory services. The congregation at the time was almost 160 people. That congregation sold that structure a decade later, and the city’s Methodists met in the second-floor auditorium of Waco Female College.
The cornerstone for Fifth Street Methodist Church—which wouldn’t become First Methodist until 1920—was laid in 1876, and construction lasted more than two years on the edifice designed by W. C. Dodson. The inaugural service took place in November 1879. First Church, known as the Mother of Methodism in Central Texas, helped other congregations sprout throughout McLennan County, and served as a leader in the movement to bring the Methodist Children’s Home to Waco in the early 1890s.
First Methodist celebrated its first century in March 1950, with a two-night pageant featuring 150 church members and a historical plaque unveiling with Texas Governor Allan Shivers, as well as radio coverage in Waco and Dallas. Just three years later, on May 11, 1953, the tornado that swept through downtown Waco and killed 114 people heavily damaged the church. The steeple, a well-known community landmark, toppled from the winds, falling across the railroad tracks that ran past the church. Although the tornado caused considerable damage to the church, community contributions allowed the totally refurbished First Methodist building to be re-dedicated within six months, in better shape than it had been before the storm, according to most accounts.
In the mid-twentieth century, the decision was made to move the congregation to a plot of more than five acres of donated land in Northwest Waco. Members broke ground in April 1962 at Lake Air and Cobbs Drives for the facility that they dedicated in March 1963. The old First Methodist—the circa-1877 downtown structure—was demolished in September 1963. Bricks made of Brazos River sand, the baptismal font, plaster cherubs, and stained glass windows, and the 1953 steeple were left behind to be salvaged and sold by the demolition crew. Yet some pieces of the historic structure transitioned to the new space, including the 1876 cornerstone (given a prominent place in the history corner of the church foyer) and the old theater organ (a hand-me-down from the Waco Hippodrome when the days of silent movies ended in 1928). In July 2019, First Methodist "reunited" with Austin Avenue United Methodist Church and the latter became First Methodist's Downtown campus. Today, First United Methodist Church of Waco carries on the congregation’s long tradition of providing a faith community focused upon worship, faith formation, service, and outreach.
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]]>One of the “go-to” guys for erecting temples to prosperity in Waco during the ragtime era (1900-18), was Roy Ellsworth Lane, who helped establish some of the earliest architectural professional organizations in Texas.
Though his structures would become well-known fixtures of Texan cityscapes, Lane spent the early part of his life in the Midwest. He studied at the University of Minnesota, where he earned degrees in architecture and civil engineering. He first practiced designing buildings in Kansas, but Lane relocated to Texas in 1907. After settling in Waco, he joined the Sanguinet and Staats architectural firm.
Lane quickly earned a reputation as a skilled architect. During the next thirty years, he designed numerous buildings in Central Texas, including the old Waco Public Library, the Hippodrome, warehouses and hotels in the business district, several schools for Waco public schools, as well as collaborating on the 22-story ALICO building, which continues to dominate the Waco skyline.
He designed courthouses in Bosque and Runnels Counties. He also designed local churches, some of which still stand, such as First Lutheran, and St. Francis on the Brazos Catholic Church. Lane’s talent can be seen throughout Waco in the number of local homes he designed for the captains of industry and other tycoons.
Much of his work can be seen, from his own portfolio, in the holdings of the Texas Collection at Baylor University. It contains sketches in his own hand as well as images shot by Fred A. Gildersleeve, the era’s leading commercial photographer.
An example of one commission is the Cottonland Castle, the stone edifice originally erected in 1890 by stone contractor John Tennant. Lane was brought in around 1910 to finish the work started at 3300 Austin Ave. When Waco’s cotton-based economy boomed, Tennant, who worked on the Provident Building and used the leftover stone on his own property, prospered as well.
That same year, Lane also designed the Flowers House (a recorded Texas Historic Landmark since 1998), 600 W. Third St. in Eddy. It was the home of local cotton-gin operator Felix A. Flowers (1870-1950) and his wife, Lucinda Mixson Flowers (1875-1949), a local social and civic leader. It is an example of the craftsman-style homes Lane mastered: the low-slung, one-story bungalows using native materials such as timber or stone, also incorporating arts-and-crafts-style light fixtures and stained glass as an integral part of the home’s wide-open floor plans. The house remained in the family of the original owners until it was sold in 1957.
Until the mid-1930s Lane lived in Waco at 520 North Fourteenth Street (see pin on the map). In 1936, Lane moved his practice to Dallas. Among his best-known works there were the Southwestern Motor Freight Bureau, the Haggar Slacks Company plant, and the Guiberson Corp. office building.
He also was the first state parks architect, an appointment he earned in 1934, after designing the facilities around White Rock Lake, in the Dallas area, for the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Lane was among the founding members of the Texas chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the Texas Association of Architects and served as president of the TAA from 1918-19. In 1954 he was elevated to an honorary membership in the Dallas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
Lane died in Dallas on Aug. 7, 1956, and was buried at Restland Memorial Park.
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