St. John's United Methodist Church - Richmond, TX - Victorian Style Architecture on Waymarking.com

Built in 1922, with additions in 1929, 1955, and 2000, the Methodist Church of Richmond represents the town's oldest continuing Methodist congregation. The red brick church was built according to plans drawn by Houston architect Carl N. Nelson, and is most closely associated with the Late Gothic Revival architectural style with its masonry-clad exterior, prominent corner towers, Tudor arch entries and windows, and terra cotta trim.

The building’s base, edges, windows, and quoins—all outlined in white terra cotta—provide a sharp contrast to its red brick veneer. The church forms a rectangle approximately 57 feet across and 84 feet long. The exterior is articulated by steps leading to three pointed-arch entries with a porch behind the arches leading to the three main doors to the interior. With its tripartite division, the front facade of the church projects a Gothic Revival appearance, especially in massing, with the central block flanked by two towers, and the articulation of pointed arch openings. These towers signal the prominent corner location of the church, mark the main entrance into the building, and give the building a vertical emphasis. The tower rooflines are now flat, but they originally were crenellated parapets, a feature that was removed in the mid-1950s due to chronic roof leaks. Windows on the second and third levels of the towers, as well as the main body, also employ the pointed arch design. The uppermost windows are pointed lancets, while those on the center level are set as wider, more flattened Tudor arches; the tripartite windows on the bottommost level of the towers lack the arch design so prominent elsewhere. Where windows are grouped as pairs or in threes, the interior framing forms a subtle illusion to Gothic tracery. The combination of the dominant towers and arched openings give a distinct Gothic Revival impression to the building.