Gethsemane Evangelical Lutheran Church

The Gethsemane Evangelical Lutheran Church is architecturally significant as a rare surviving example in Detroit of a wooden Victorian Gothic chapel by Spier and Rohns, a well known Michigan architecture firm. It is particularly notable for its unusual and well-preserved interior decorating. The Gethsemane Evangelical Lutheran church, originally the Evangelical Lutheran Gethsemane church, was established in 1890 by twenty-six families from the congregation of Zion Lutheran Church. They established the church, whose parish was drawn from the rapidly growing residential area east of 33rd Street, in the branch school that the Zion congregation had established on Twenty-eighth Street. The entirely German congregation turned to the Detroit architecture firm of Spier and Rohns for the design of a modest wooden church that could be built for about $2,000. Spier and Rohns had achieved prominence among Detroit's colony of German immigrant architects for their successful practice designing churches, and commercial buildings for the city's German-American community, as well as for their numerous railroad stations throughout the state. Both men, Frederick H. Spier (1855-1924) and William C Rohns (1856-1912), had been trained in Germany and migrated to the United States in the early 1880s. Better known for their ponderous masonry structures, such as the National Register listed Sweetest Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church (1890-93), Gethsemane Church is the only known example of the firm's more modest church commissions executed in wood. The congregation experienced only moderate growth and the structure remained adequate for their needs until the church became defunct in 1978. In 1926 a parochial school was constructed adjacent to the church. Probably because of the conservative nature of the German congregation, the building was never altered on the exterior. The unusual interior is even more significant than the exterior because it is the only known example in Michigan of this type of decorating. Its excellent state of preservation and the maintenance of the original color scheme add to its significance. The current owner, the Motor City Baptist Church, which acquired the structure from the defunct Gethsemane Congregation in 1978, would like to have the building listed in the National Register so that it will be eligible to apply for grants to aid the congregation in its efforts to properly restore the structure.

Gethsemane Evangelical Lutheran Church is located about three miles west of Detroit's central business district in a Late Victorian residential area of modest frame cottages. The church is situated in the middle of the block closely abutted by a modest frame Victorian cottage on the left and the 1926 church school on the right. The school is an undistinguished, two-story, flat-roofed, brick building of utilitarian design, which is not included in this nomination. The church is an end-gable-roofed, frame, Victorian Gothic chapel with a central tower and vestibule on the front. It is clad in its original, feather-edged, novelty clapboarding. The facade, facing Twenty-eighth Street, is composed of the tall, square, central tower and the shed-roofed vestibules that flank it. The tower is buttressed at the first floor level with canted wooden piers supporting octagonal, galvanized metal corner buttresses with conical finials. Above the open, lancet-arched belfry (now temporarily enclosed) is a tall, tapering spire. The lancet-arched, double door entry with traceried transom is sheltered by a shallow, gabled-hood supported on simple, curved brackets, above which is a panel of scalloped shingling. The door is flanked by lancet-arched Gothic windows lighting the vestibules. The side elevations are identical. Each is composed of five bays of tall, lancet-arched, stained-glass windows. A single door with a lancet-arched transom leads into the front vestibule. The eaves are trimmed with widely spaced, shallow, curved brackets and an arcaded, paneled frieze. The rear elevation contains the semi-octagonal apse with two lancet-arched, stained-glass windows flanking a small, round, stained-glass window placed high on the wall. The interior contains only the shallow, front vestibule and the church auditorium. The vestibule is a narrow functional space containing two enclosed stairways to the church balcony. It has plain vertical board wainscotting and walls covered in cream-painted canvas. The church auditorium is a two-story space open to the slope of the pitched roof. A balcony with an arcaded paneled front extends across the back and down the two sides as far as the sanctuary. It is supported by round metal columns with splayed capitols that continue up to carry the exposed timber roof braces. The rear balcony contains the organ loft. The clustered organ pipes centered on the back wall above a range of large grilles extend up to the peak of the roof. The raised sanctuary apse is framed by a lancet arch. The vaulted apse is lit by a pair of large stained-glass windows flanking a small, round, stained-glass window placed high on the end wall. The apse is now ringed by several rows of choir pews behind a central lecturn table at the front of the dais. The church is remarkable for its unusual decoration. The basic color scheme is cream and gold with touches of blue and red. The vertical board wainscoting is painted in a simple geometric pattern. The walls and ceiling are covered in canvas and decorated with intricate raised geometric patterns formed by small circles and squares of a chipboard-like material glued to the canvas and antiqued in ochre to contrast with the cream painted walls. A wide border with a cruciform motif extends around the room above the wainscoting. The sanctuary arch is outlined in an intricate geometric pattern. The sanctuary apse is paneled with thin concentric banding. On the upper wall where the continuous skin of canvas curves up to form the ceiling, a shallow-linear arch spans the bays between the roof braces marking the change in hue at the lighter colored ceiling. The organ pipes are enframed by a scalloped border while the ceiling is sparsely ornamented with thin lines of raised decoration connecting the vertical members of the trusses. The same raised geometric motif is found on the two, large, opaque, bowl-type, light fixtures suspended by chains from the ceiling. Simple frosted glass fixtures mounted on the face of the balcony and indirect lighting in the capitols of the columns supporting the roof structure provide supplementary illumination. The church is lit by ten, large lancet-arched, stained-glass windows. These are of the typical late nineteenth century type with brightly colored floral, stained-glass, top and bottom panels and undecorated rectangular tinted-glass lights between. The church is furnished with old wooden pews of a simple design.