1890: Marvin Methodist

The record

1. 1882

   Tyler’s first Immaculate Conception church is built at the northwest corner of North College Avenue and West Locust Street; many early parishioners are Irish railroad workers.¹

2. April 11, 1887

   Congregation Beth El is founded and first meets in the Odd Fellows hall on the square; it dedicates its first temple at South College Avenue and University Place in 1889.²

3. 1890

   Marvin Methodist Episcopal Church, South, builds a brick church for $60,000 at the southwest corner of West Erwin Street and South Bois D’Arc Avenue.³

4. 1891

   Bethlehem First Baptist, Tyler’s first Black Baptist congregation, builds a church on West Front Street that the Tyler MPS, citing the City of Tyler, calls the first brick church in Texas built by African Americans. It moves to West Lollar Street in 1933.⁴

5. 1913 and 1918

   First Baptist builds at the northwest corner of West Ferguson Street and North Bois D’Arc Avenue in 1913, and Christ Episcopal finishes its Gothic Revival church on South Bois D’Arc in 1918.⁵⁶

6. March 17, 1935

   The present Immaculate Conception church, at South Broadway and West Front Street, is dedicated (the Tyler MPS says it was built in 1934).¹

7. November 15, 2000

   Marvin Methodist, which the downtown nomination calls the oldest building in the district and the only remaining 19th-century brick church in the city, is listed on the National Register.³