First Presbyterian Church Building
Waxahachie, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The Rev. J. A. Smiley organized the First Presbyterian Church in 1871 with 16 charter members. The first church building was erected in 1876 and replaced by this structure in 1916-17. After this congregation merged with another church in 1979, the building was sold to the Ellis County Art Association for use as a fine arts museum. It is a fine example of a classical church with beaux arts details in its modified Doric columns and art glass windows. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1997
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Rev. J.A. Smiley gathered sixteen charter members into Waxahachie's First Presbyterian Church in 1871, and after an 1876 building the congregation raised this classical sanctuary in 1916â17, with modified Doric columns, beaux-arts detailing, and art-glass windows. When the church merged with another in 1979, the building became a fine-arts museum under the Ellis County Art Association. Its dignified front still commands its corner of the county seat.
Why it matters
It stands as a polished example of early-twentieth-century classical church design and of how congregations' old homes become community art spaces.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- ¡ J.A. Smiley
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Presiding Elder's House
Waxahachie, TX
This 1901 house was built for Mrs. M.J. Cooke, who sold it the next year to the Methodist Conference as a parsonage for the presiding elder overseeing the Waxahachie district. For more than four decades it housed thirteen church officials, beginning with the Rev. O.F. Sensabaugh, its late-Victorian porch, gables, and windows marking the standing of the district superintendent. It is a rare survivor among the administrative homes of organized frontier Methodism.
First United Methodist Church of Waxahachie
Waxahachie, TX
In the spring of 1849, a Methodist society of ten gathered in a settler's cabin in the new town of Waxahachie, raising their first church three years later. An 1856 building was shared with Presbyterian and Baptist neighbors, and in 1866 the site hosted the organizing of the Central Texas Conference. Successive buildings rose, burned, and were rebuilt as the congregation endured the Depression and flourished at mid-century.
St. Joseph Catholic Church
Waxahachie, TX
Waxahachie's Catholic story began in 1859 with two immigrant brothers, joined by a German family in 1870 and Irish stonemasons who came in 1871 to build the county courthouse, keeping the faith in their homes until Father Claude Marie Thion organized St. Joseph parish with twenty members in 1874. He said the first Mass in 1875 and performed Ellis County's first Catholic wedding in 1877. Through property trades, reinterments, and steady growth, the congregation grew to more than 1,300 diverse families across two centuries.
McKinney-Aday Farm House
Waxahachie, TX
Henry McKinney rode a year with Company C of the Texas Rangers' Frontier Battalion before settling near Waxahachie, where he and his wife Viola bought a 71-acre tract in the fertile Blackland Prairie in 1903. In 1913 he hired local builder Jack Harris to raise this 2,000-square-foot Prairie-Style farmhouse, its wrap-around porch, dormers, and cedar-shake roof completed that August. With its original barn, corrals, and chicken house still standing, it remains one of rural Ellis County's few intact early-20th-century family farmsteads.