Central United Methodist Church - Detroit, Michigan
Posted by: 
GT.US
N 42° 20.226 W 083° 03.040
17T E 331064 N 4689241
The Central United Methodist Church is located at 23 E Adams (the corner of Woodward Avenue and Adams) in Detroit, Michigan.
Waymark Code: WM83F1
Location: Michigan, United States
Date Posted: 01/20/2010
Views: 9
The Detroit 1701 website at (
visit link) tells us:
"This is the church of the first Methodist congregation in Michigan. Territorial Governor Lewis Cass approved their charter in 1822, less than a century after John Wesley founded the Methodist reform movement in Savannah. In the early 1860s, this congregation had to make a decision about building a new church since their wooden structure at Woodward and State was razed by fire.
They selected Gordon Lloyd as their architect, an architect whose imprint in Detroit is still large because of the churches he built. Lloyd was born in England but raised in Sherbrooke, Quebec and then returned to England for his training. He traveled extensively in northern Europe, developing an appreciation of northern Gothic cathedrals before migrating to Detroit in 1858.
Episcopalian congregations at this time had fixed ideas about the structure of a church, but Methodists were more flexible, so Lloyd could be imaginative when he designed this beautiful structure. He specialized in Gothic structures, so he built a light gray, rock-faced limestone church with dark stone trim. If you walk around this church and examine it, you will see the skills of Gordon Lloyd illustrate themselves almost a century and a half after he completed the building. You might also compare this Gothic church to the Gothic-influenced Fyfe Shoe Building directly across Woodward. The original stained glass windows in Central Methodist were imported from England, but they deteriorated so the congregation, in 1955, commissioned the Willet Studios of Philadelphia to replace the windows with new stained glass resembling windows found in the Gothic cathedrals of medieval England and France. All of the windows focus upon the life and teachings of Christ applied to contemporary issue, so the Statue of Liberty and the United Nations Building are included in the stained glass windows.
In 1936, Woodward Avenue was widened and the length of the church was cut by 28 feet. The steeple was moved 26 feet to the east."