by Jerry Flook, Garland Historian
Published in the Garland-Rowlett Messenger, February 2014
The oldest surviving church building in Garland stands at the corner of Bobtown and Rowlett roads. Soon to turn 100 years old, it now houses the Bethany Lighthouse Church, APC, but was built in the winter of 1913/1914 as the Rose Hill Christian Church. It was dedicated at a service held on Sunday, 29 March 1914.
Rose Hill was a village with its center located on the present intersection of Bobtown, Rowlett, and Rose Hill roads. At the time of the Christian Church’s construction there were two other churches in Rose Hill-the Baptist and the Methodist. There was an active congregation of the Christian Church (now also called the Disciples of Christ) at the neighboring village of New Hope (later renamed Sunnyvale), the elders of which organized the one at Rose Hill. In August of 1913 the Rev. E. C. Spicer, a popular evangelist of the Christian denomination, held a three-week “protracted meeting” at Rose Hill, presumably with the goal of bringing together a Christian congregation in that neighborhood. At the end of Spicer’s revival meetings 40 converts had been added to the role and the congregation was officially organized. Construction of the church by men of the congregation was begun in November, 1913, and was completed the following March.
The building was designed in the Craftsman style popular at that period. It is said that the foundation incorporated a copy of the Bible. Its outstanding exterior features were a louvered belfry (never equipped with a bell) and high portico approached by a long flight of steps. The interior was characterized by a coffered ceiling, papered walls, and starburst glass window panes. It was furnished with a fine upright piano and choir seating said to have come from one of Garland’s early movie theaters. Each wooden choir seat folded back, revealing a man’s hat rack underneath. Classroom space and an immersion baptistry were added sometime in the early 1950s.
Families serving as pillars of the congregation during its history were the Andersons, Comptons, Coyles, Dunaways, Flooks, Hickses, Littles, Meltons, Shipleys, Tisingers, and Vaughns.
For most of its history the ministers were part-time and were students supplied by TCU. In the 1950s, however, preachers of the Independent Christian Church gained control and affiliation with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) was severed.
Sometime in the mid-1970s the county condemned the church building in preparation for the widening of Rowlett Road. At the urging of Garland Councilman Delora Lewis, Mayor Don Raines requested the commissioners court to put the demolition on hold so that a solution could be arranged to save the historic structure. The City of Garland would look at the possibility of “taking it off the county’s hands,” but if the church became a “huge expenditure,” the City could not afford it. Apparently the City dropped the idea of obtaining the building, and the county concluded simply to leave it where it sat and to widen the road right up to the portico, removing the church’s front yard and portico steps. Subsequently the building was sold to another congregation, and the exterior features have been altered extensively. Nevertheless, the original 1914 conformation of the Rose Hill Christian Church is still unmistakable.