First United Presbyterian Church - Auburn, Nebraska - Victorian Style Architecture on Waymarking.com

The 1906 First United Presbyterian Church is architecturally significant as a notable late Gothic Revival building in the community of Auburn, Nebraska. Further significance is rendered through the church's seating arrangement and auditorium-type configuration that originated in the 1860's as the "Akron plan."

The First United Presbyterian Church in Auburn, Nebraska (1970 population 3,650), occupies a prominent location at the northeast junction of 19th and "N" Streets. Brick surfacing has been retained on both streets; immediately to the west is the Nemaha County Courthouse Square.

Constructed between 1906-07, the church is a modified rectangular building of brick construction, with a foundation and exterior trim of limestone. The arrangement of parts covered by roof sections of varying shapes articulates the interior order.

Serving as salient parts are two square towers of analogous design: a three-story tower at the southwest containing the principal entrances and housing a belfry and foyer; and a two-story tower on the west containing an auxiliary entrance and housing a staircase that leads to the basement. Both towers are treated with arched openings with corresponding overhead stone bands, corner buttresses set at right angles, and continuous crenelated parapets.

Gabled walls on the south and west are treated identically: in the center of each is a pointed-arch Saracenic window with roughly-textured brick and stone trim; beneath the large fenestral opening is a tripartite arrangement of rectangular windows flanked on either side by a two-tiered buttress and a lancet window; in the gable peak is a blind arched opening with brick and stone trim; and visually defining the gable are return cornices and two rows of rough bricks along the rakes.

A one-story apsidal projection is on the east gabled wall, and at the north is a hip-roofed section measuring approximately 47' x 35' that makes exclusive use of rectangular openings. A one-story, hip-roofed section abuts the north wall of the shorter tower, and a flat-roofed shelter that protects steps leading to the basement is at the southeast.