I’d driven by Christ Temple Cathedral Church dozens of times at the corner of Page Boulevard and Pendleton Avenue, and last weekend the light was satisfactory, so I stopped and took some photographs.
It’s a beautiful building, and was once home to Salem Methodist Episcopal Church, which moved out to Frontenac at the northeast corner of Highway 40 and Lindbergh Boulevard (you’ve seen it a million times–it’s a prominent location). The tower of this church has obviously been truncated due to the ravages of the weather, but it still creates a nice landmark on this busy intersection.
The backside has a clerestory of square wood frame windows that is common in the architecture of many mainline Protestant churches in St. Louis.
Salem Methodist, like many prominent churches, has had many locations, including Carr Square, and you can see its location below. It later became the home of a synagogue.
This was the Salem congregation’s fourth building, which they occupied from 1906 to 1925. In 1911, they purchased a church bell from The Henry Stuckstede Bell Foundry Company of St.Louis, and hung it in this tower. When they left this building, they took the bell with them, and stored it in the basement of their fifth building, which had no tower. When they moved to their sixth and present building in Ladue, they built a tower for the bell, and it rings there today.