First Evangelical Church

First Evangelical Church is a historic Lutheran church at 1311 Holman Street in Houston, Texas. It is part of the North American Lutheran Church.The current church building was constructed in 1927 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.HistoryOn July 1, 1851, a group led by the Rev. Caspar Messon Braun (1822–1880) founded the Erste Deutsche Evangelische Lutherische Kirche, or First German Evangelical Lutheran Church. The State of Texas issued the church's charter on September 21 of that year. First Lutheran was the first Lutheran congregation in Houston and the second Lutheran congregation in Texas. First Lutheran is responsible for the establishment of no less than eight daughter congregations in Harris County.In November, 1851, just 2 months after its founding, six missionaries from St. Chrischona of Basel, Switzerland arrived in Texas. Along with the Rev. Braun, they established the First Evangelical Lutheran Synod in Texas, often called the Texas Synod. The purpose of the synod was to gather the many Lutherans in Texas that were without congregations and a churchly structure. The confession of the synod included subscription to the Lutheran Confessions, adopting unaltered symbolical books as found in the Book of Concord, 1580, accepting the Unaltered Small Catechism, and selecting the German Hymn book of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States.The first church building was erected on the southeast corner of Texas Avenue at Milam Street. In 1901, under the Rev. William L. Blasberg (1862–1935), the congregation moved to the northwest corner of Texas Avenue at Caroline Street, to a new red brick and sandstone edifice built in the Gothic tradition. After selling the second structure in 1926, the First Evangelical Church, as it became known, purchased the current site on Holman Street. Under the leadership of the Rev. Detlev Baltzer (1889–1962), the congregation hired architect Joseph W. Northrop, Jr., who had moved to Houston to oversee construction of the original Rice Institute, now Rice University. James West was general contractor for the new church campus, and J. C. Nolan and the Star Electric and Engineering Company held sub-contracts.