HistoricSiteMarkers
Progressive & Modern Era

Walnut Street Church of Christ

Sherman, Grayson County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Completed in 1920, this classical revival sanctuary first served the congregation of the Walnut Street Church of Christ since 1963, when it moved to a new site, the congregation has ties to the 1850s. Members built this edifice to serve as their third sanctuary. The chapel is a two-story raised structure with a central stairway, grand portico, and 48 stained glass windows. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1986

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Completed in 1920, this classical revival sanctuary served the Walnut Street Church of Christ in Sherman, a congregation with roots reaching back to the 1850s. Built as the members' third house of worship, the two-story raised structure boasts a grand portico, central stairway, and 48 stained glass windows. It was named a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1986.

Why it matters

The church reflects the growth and permanence of a long-lived Texas congregation, and its ambitious architecture marks the confidence of early-twentieth-century town life.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Central Christian Church

Sherman, TX

This Sherman congregation dates to the late 1850s, when pioneer minister Benjamin Franklin Hall arrived to preach and organize a church, gathering worshippers in a brush arbor and a Masonic-hall meeting house. A first sanctuary rose in 1875, and after acquiring a new site in 1895 the congregation built a larger church in 1905. It has served the people of Sherman for well over a century.

Courthouses of Grayson County

Sherman, TX

Since Grayson County's founding in 1846, its seat of justice has taken every shape from a $232 frame building on bald prairie to a native limestone landmark. Five courthouses came and went in the county's first forty years before the railroad reached Sherman in 1873, bringing better materials and a majestic 1876 courthouse crowned with a clock-and-bell tower. That building burned in 1930, and the Depression delayed its limestone successor until 1936.

Hall Furniture Building

Sherman, TX

Missouri native and Civil War veteran Rufus Gaines Hall opened a Sherman dry goods store in 1868, prospering in part by sending thirty "notion wagons" to peddle supplies to farm families across thirteen North Texas counties. His son Dr. Hugh Logan Hall joined in 1872, and five generations of Halls ran the business here for a century. Built as two structures in 1876 and 1885 and joined in 1936, the building became a striking Art Deco storefront banded with black-and-ivory structural glass.

Grayson County

Sherman, TX

Grayson County grew from Holland Coffee's 1837 trading post at the Red River's Preston Bend into a hub of the Peters' Colony and, in 1846, a county named for Republic of Texas attorney general Peter W. Grayson. Its seat, Sherman, moved to its present site in 1848 and earned fame for so many courthouses and fine 19th-century schools that it was called the "Athens of Texas." The Butterfield Trail, cattle drives, and early railroads all crossed the county, and Lake Texoma later made it a tourist draw.