{"nrhp_refnum":"90001366","name":"St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church","other_names":["St. Paul's United Methodist Church"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"40 School St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Point Arena","county":"Mendocino County","state":"CA","lat":38.913835677000066,"lon":-123.69340660399996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1990-09-13","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Religion"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A single-story Gothic-style wooden church at 40 School Street in Point Arena, Mendocino County, California, built in 1906-1907 on a hilltop site just north of the town's commercial district, replacing an earlier church on the same site.","why_significant":"It is the only religious building within Point Arena itself that is more than fifty years old, giving the clearest surviving link to the town's long history of organized religion. The Methodists founded the town's first congregation in 1867 and built their first church here in 1874. It has also served as a center for community activities of a religious or quasi-religious nature.","narrative":"St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church is a single-story wooden church on a hilltop at 40 School Street in Point Arena, just north of the commercial district. Two gable roofs meet in a T shape, and the horizontal wood siding is pierced by large multi-paned pointed-arch windows. A four-sided tower rises at the front where the roofs meet, with turned-post balustrades, a bell opening with decorative bracing, and a circular stained-glass window. A hipped-roof portico shelters the entrance. The Methodists organized Point Arena's first congregation in 1867 and built a church on this site in 1874. That building and the neighboring school burned in the 1906 earthquake, and work on a replacement began before the year ended. The new church was larger but kept a nineteenth-century look. It is the only religious building in the town more than fifty years old, and it has continued to serve as a center for community activities.","period_of_significance":"1907-1940","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Late Victorian: Gothic","criteria":["A"],"status_note":"Still in religious use as a church.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:54:27.602973-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_CA/90001366.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90001366/be0b46e708-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90001366/be0b46e708-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"JemcC","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._Paul%27s_United_Methodist_Church,_Point_Arena,_CA.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">JemcC</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._Paul%27s_United_Methodist_Church,_Point_Arena,_CA.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/123857678","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Paul%27s_Methodist_Episcopal_Church_(Point_Arena,_California)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7591171"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/california/mendocino-county/st-pauls-methodist-episcopal-church-90001366/"}