April 2026.
First Congregational Church is a tall, imposing Gothic Revival church on East Broad Street. It was designed by notable Columbus architect Howard Dwight Smith with his mentor John Russell Pope. The church has a rough, stripped-down appearance, and it is very vertical compared to other Gothic Revival churches of its time.
First Congregational is located at 444 East Broad Street in the Discovery District neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. It is bordered by Gay Street to the north, Broad Street to the south, 9th Street and the Columbus Museum of Art to the east, and Cleveland Avenue and CCAD’s design studios to the west.
History
The First Congregational parish in Columbus was founded as the “Third Presbyterian Church” in 1852 by a group of citizens who were members of the Second Presbyterian Church. They were abolitionists, which was a movement that was growing in popularity with Christians at the time. The congregation built a wood frame chapel on the northeast corner of 3rd Street and Lynn Alley (now the site of Renaissance Columbus), which was financed via a $1,000 loan from Second Presbyterian. The new church’s first service was on September 26, 1852.
In 1856, the church renamed itself to “First Congregational Church,” the name it has today. Congregational churches are Calvinist churches that are independent and govern their own parish. As their membership increased, a larger brick Romanesque Revival church was built in 1857 on Broad Street, which was on the site of the Hayden Building today and faced the Ohio Statehouse.
A portrait of Gladden. (Wikimedia)
The congregation is probably best known for its pastor Washington Gladden, who held the role for 36 years, between 1882 and 1918. He had very progressive views for the time, including a shorter work week and regulation of monopolies, and his sermons were extremely popular and were reprinted in newspapers. He was even nominated to become president of Ohio State, but his pro-Catholic sentiment was very controversial for the time. He retired in 1914 and became minister emeritus until his death of a stroke in 1918.
Perspective of the church drawn by Pope. (Carnegie Museum of Art)
The current First Congregational Church was designed in the Gothic Revival style in 1930 by John Russell Pope with newly inaugurated university architect Howard Dwight Smith. At a cost of $1 million to build, it was dedicated on December 6, 1931. A Modern addition onto the north end of the church was completed in 1963 by Brooks & Coddington.
The church building was listed on the Columbus Register of Historic Properties in 1982, and it was recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021. In 2018, the church built a social justice park with murals and art, which was named after Washington Gladden.
Photos
A nice oblique view of the church from Broad Street:
This church is definitely a departure from the eclecticism of Victorian Gothic Revival architecture and an attempt towards a more pure, academic revival of the Gothic style. Naturally, it’s still a picturesque reimagining of a medieval Gothic church, but less of an idealized one. It is very vertical and skinny for its size.
South facade:
The portal and rose window create a duality, but the rest of the facade is pretty simple. The corners have two tall buttresses.
An oblique view from the other side:
No picturesque asymmetry here (not counting the church offices in back), the building is perfectly symmetrical.
The office wing is pretty standard for churches of this time and has a more Tudor-inspired appearance with bay windows and rectangular frames, not any pointed arches:
Entrance portal:
This portal is also very minimal, focusing more on its sculptural form and effect versus elaborate carved ornamentation. Still, there are some fancy details in the empty niches on each corner and the relief on the very top.
One of the empty niches:
Detail of the relief:
You can also see the very rough masonry that makes up the church’s walls. The portal uses a smooth, homogenous gray ashlar, though the size of the stones varies. Above, the stone used has much more variation in its height, width, and color.
Inside, this relief above the doors reads “Enter to Worship, Depart to Serve”:
The rose window:
It has a very floral and curvy appearance, even for a rose window. I like the quatrefoils on each “petal”.
Even the buttresses are simple, without any flying arches or anything:
West facade:
The transept has a larger window, and a fleche sits atop the crossing. The nave has repetitive, smaller stained-glass windows.
Transept:
The buttressing and appearance is very similar to the south facade, the main difference being the window and lack of entrance.
Nave:
It seems like the church has aisles, they’re just much shorter in comparison to the height of the nave and its windows.
The copper fleche:
It’s not very common for Gothic Revival churches to have fleches except for the most elaborate examples. Even this one is pretty pared down, versus the highly detailed designs on churches like Notre-Dame and Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.
Like the church itself, it is rather slim and has minimal horizontal emphasis (only in the grotesques):
I think this is a great example of the tail end of Gothic Revival architecture, which had a more academic focus and a keener eye for massing and form versus the crazier churches of the Victorian era.
Sources:
Architecture: Columbus by Robert Samuelson
AIA Guide to Columbus by Jeffrey Darbee
https://www.first-church.org/contact/church-history/
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/social-justice-park-opens-in-downtown-columbus/
https://collection.carnegieart.org/objects/ae7986b0-c7ba-4cfe-85f2-71eb3f1ba3d3
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