I took a closer look at the old Immanuel Evangelisch Lutheran Church, which sits at the corner of Marcus and Lexington.
The beautiful front portal features Christ in a mandorla, an almond-shaped Medieval icon, with two angels kneeling on either side with the Greek letters alpha and omega, referencing the book of Revelation. In English, the phrase, “All Glory to God” flanks the entrance.
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The cornerstone is interesting, as it has a Latin phrase, “AD GLORIAM DEI” written on it, which I would expect on a Roman Catholic church, not a Lutheran one, which focuses on the vernacular. The phrase means “To the glory of God,” which I also find interesting because it uses three of the four words of the motto of the Catholic Jesuits, “Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam,” which means, “To the greater glory of God.” The original location of the church, the second oldest Lutheran congregation in St. Louis as an offshoot of Trinity Lutheran, was down on 11th Street. It moved here in 1927.
The architecture firm was the prominent trio of Hoener, Baum and Froese.
In addition to the Book of Revelations, Jesus refers to himself as “the beginning and the end,” so it can be just one more identifier.
Your website is amazing! My father was the principal of a Lutheran grade school that existed in a (long ago) demolished building that existed to the right of the church on Marcus. He accepted the job in 1952 (at the age of 20!) and served as principal, teacher of grades 6-8, driver of the school bus (actually a van), and coach of the sports teams. The Immanuel congregation built a satellite church in North County on 11100 Old Halls Ferry in 1959, and the school moved there at that time. Move was due to the, er, demographic changed in the old neighborhood. Dont know what the status of the adjacent cemetery to old Immanuel is; my father would get yelled at by the church groundskeeper for practicing softball with students after school.
The cemetery is being maintained by a congregation out in St. Louis County:
http://stlouispatina.com/western-lutheran-cemetery-revisited-again/
I was in his 8th grade graduating class of 1957. Jack Greising was my teacher for four years, four grades in the same room at once. His classes made a trip to Chicago in the van, where he visited his mother, your grandmother. I remember it well. At lunch the kids played touch football in an unused back portion of the cemetery. I sometimes helped the cemetery grounds keeper and school and church custodian Mr. Marx after school. He lived in a house on the cemetery grounds. My father Theodore F. E. F. Huning was president of the congregation when Immanuel Chapel was built. It was he who arranged the purchase of the land for the chapel/school. It was under him that the church on Marcus Ave. was integrated. The school building was the converted original church building. The windows of our classroom looked right out over the LCMS Western District cemetery. From what I can see on Google Maps and http://stlouispatina.com/western-lutheran-cemetery-revisited-again/ it looks like many of the tombstones and monuments and the groundkeeper’s house are gone. My best regards, Theodore
I may be mistaken in referring to it as the LCMS Western District Cemetery. “Western Ev. Lutheran Cemetery Association was organized by Lutheran Saxon immigrants who had come to St. Louis City in 1839. It was customary for congregations to have cemeteries for their own members. Members of Immanuel Lutheran Church, the second Lutheran church in St. Louis, then at 15th and Morgan (now Delmar), and Zion Lutheran Church at 21st and Benton bought the land at Papin (now Marcus) and Lexington to Ashland Avenues. The Association was incorporated by Act of the Legislature and approved on February 20, 1865, as Western Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery Association, of the City of St Louis, State of Missouri It was sometimes called Papin Saxon or Paxon Cemetery. On at least one death certificate it was called Gravois Saxton. It is almost one block square.” Find a Grave https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/1418143/western-lutheran-cemetery
Thanks for pointing out this info, and thanks for this great resource that you provide.
You’re welcome. By the way, there must be a large number of gravestones missing from the cemetery, right?
Chris: Don’t know if you’ll see this, but I was searching around Google Maps today, and noticed that the church building is now occupied by “First French-speaking Baptist Church”; interesting how this very old building is still being used as a house of worship. From the photos on the congregation’s website, the interior looks pretty much as it did 65 years ago when I was a child.
Yes, I had seen that. I’m curious as to where the congregation came from.