Alethea Drexler
archives assistant
We got a pile of emails about this one, from architectural detectives from who knows how many institutions and organizations.
After a lot of wrangling, Lauren at the University of Houston suggested that it might be the First Evangelical Lutheran Church, which is no longer standing but was located on Texas Avenue between Austin and Caroline Streets–she noted, too, that maps showed a curve in the streetcar tracks on Caroline. Several readers have commented on the streetcar tracks, which do curve.
The First Evangelical Lutheran was founded in 1851 and their website says that the congregation “moved to the northwest corner of Texas Avenue at Caroline Street, to a new red brick and sandstone edifice built in the Gothic tradition” in 1901. I emailed them. They emailed me back but also passed my inquiry to Preservation Houston.
Jim with Preservation Houston called me to say they had gotten a “flood of emails” all of a sudden about an unidentified church in a blog post but confirmed that it was the First Evangelical Lutheran and said that there is a memorial plaque on a lamppost near its former location.