I came to the realization recently that I had a grand total of four posts about Tower Grove South out of over 4,500 posts over the last thirteen years, so decided to go take some pictures of the neighborhood. Due to the large amount of large street trees, I’ll probably need to come back in the winter, but in the meantime, here are some churches, starting with Oak Hill Presbyterian Church, at the northwest corner of Connecticut Street and Oak Hill Avenue.

The current main sanctuary was completed in 1911, but the dedication did not occur until 1913. It started as a small wood frame church at Bent and Humphrey in 1895. That building burned, and the congregation moved here in 1903.

It’s a great example of how the Gothic Revival was moving away from the French and German and towards the English in the early Twentieth Century. I wonder if the spire was originally intended to be taller. The congregation actually held a ceremony where they burned their mortgage papers when the last bond was paid.

And I knew it! Looking back at the history of the church, I was correct in my hypothesis, that the small wing facing Oak Hill Avenue was an original sanctuary that was built on the property first. This adds yet another church, along with at least Jamison Memorial and Lafayette Park Methodist, where a smaller church was built first on the back of a corner lot and then a larger sanctuary was built later on another exposure.