First Baptist Church - Bozeman, MT - Bell Towers on Waymarking.com

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First Baptist Church - Bozeman, MT

in Bell Towers

Posted by:  T0SHEA

12T E 496891 N 5058217

Recently the congregation of Bozeman’s First Baptist Church celebrated its 125th anniversary. The building itself, however, is not quite as old.

In fact, it has been around for hardly over a century, being built in 1911. The brick Gothic Revival church was one of myriad buildings in Bozeman designed by prolific local architect Fred Willson. Given that this building, a church, was designed and built early in his career, the Gothic Revival styling was to be expected. Later on Willson was to design all three of the Art Deco buildings to be built in the city.

Set at the southwest corner of the sanctuary, the brick of the bell tower/steeple matches the rest of the building, save for the brick wall of the entrance steps, which were added later. The tower serves as the main entrance to the sanctuary and also holds the building's cornerstone in its southwest corner. Typical of many protestant churches of the time, the tower ends not with a towering, slender spire but with crenellations around its top. All three sides of the tower not facing the building have Gothic arched windows, all filled with stained glass matching the windows of the sanctuary.

Fred Fielding Willson (1877 – 1956) was an architect who definitely left his mark in Montana. Exhibiting an eclectic style as the result of studying the architecture of Europe, he earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Columbia University in 1902 and then spent two years traveling throughout Europe and taking classes in Paris at Ecole des Beaux Arts. From Georgian and Mission Revival to Art Deco and Craftsman, Willson was involved with more than 1,050 projects, from elaborate homes, modest bungalows and efficient apartment buildings to all of Bozeman’s older schools (Emerson, Willson (named in his honour), Longfellow, Hawthorne, Irving and the original part of the high school. Willson also had a hand in the Armory, Baxter Hotel, County Courthouse, Pioneer Museum (formerly the jail), Ellen Theatre and several dorms, student union building and fieldhouse on MSU’s campus.

First Baptist Church

The First Baptist Church is a highly distinctive example of early 20th Century, Gothic Revival style church architecture, and is representative of the overall cultural diversification that accompanied the arrival of the railroad in Bozeman. During the same year the railroad arrived, 1883, Reverend L.S. Wood organized Baptist Churches in Townsend Bozeman, and Livingston, on a trip from Helena that was intended to find all Baptists in the eastern two-thirds of Montana. The number of Baptists in Bozeman may have increased as a result of the economic growth brought on by the railroad.

Reverend Byron Morse, a friend of Wood's, was enlisted to lead the Bozeman congregation. In December, 1883, the first services were held in a private home, in Chesnut Hall (located in the first log structure built on Main Street), and in a hall in the Courier Building. The following year a small log church was built on E. Babcock Street, and remained in use until 1911, when this church was built. The new church was designed by Fred Willson, who was just beginning his architectural career in Bozeman. In 1915, the First Baptist Church of Bozeman was incorporated with 100 members.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
This brick church has a rectangular plan with a projecting square tower at the entry with a crenelated parapet. The one-bay facade is asymmetrical and consists of one-over-one double-hung windows at the daylight basement level and an enormous Gothic arched stained glass window in the center that has heavy wooden tracery in a Gothic and lancet arch pattern. Fixed, rectangular, stained glass windows with brick buttresses between each set of three windows run down the southern and northern elevators. The stained glass windows have plexiglass storms. There is a second, double wooden door entrance on the west facade with a Gothic arch transom above. The brick construction is of a running bond pattern and consists of corbeled stretcher over soldier, over corbeled header to form a water table. The gable roof is covered with light grey asphalt shingles and features a small dormer with stained glass insets and a large round ventilator on the gable peak.

In 1958 major interior alterations were made. The large, non-contributing brick stairway was presumably added to the front at that time. During more recent years, a handicapped access ramp has been built up to the north doorway of the front facade.
From the NRHP Architectural Inventory