St Paul's Presbyterian Church, Spring Hill

Today's historical building has adorned the Spring Hill skyline since 1889, as evidenced in this earlier post. In fact, in 1930, the city recognised the importance of the structure by renaming the street that it stood in. Formerly known as Leichhardt St (after the famous explorer Ludwig Leichhardt), a section between Boundary Rd and Brookes St became St Paul's Terrace, named after St Paul's Presbyterian Church. Here is the church during its construction period between 1887 and 1889.
(Photo: State Library of Queensland and John Oxley Library; #171002)

And here is the finished church in 1890. I'm pretty sure that the photographer was leaning, not the church :-)
(Photo: State Library of Queensland and John Oxley Library; #57954)

The architect for the Gothic-styled church was FDG Stanley, who was quite experienced in working with the locally quarried porphyry or tuff stone. He had designed the National Bank as well as a couple of other stone churches. The church was built by Thomas Rees for £11,000 and was dedicated on 15 May 1889. Rees was able to use some of the stone from the congregation's previous church in Creek St, which had been sold to acquire this site. A brief history of the parish and the church can be found on the church's web pages.
(Photo: © 2010 the foto fanatic)

Although newer high-rise buildings in Brisbane have meant that St Paul's isn't quite as dominating as it once was, it is still a very noticeable structure. It is pictured above on a recent Sunday as the congregation emerged after the service.

Click here for a Google Map.

tff

Next: Fortitude