St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church

Completed in 1897, this two-story stone church on a corner at the edge of Springfield's central business district was built for a German Lutheran congregation founded in 1845. Architect Charles Cregar designed it in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, using light limestone walls with red sandstone foundation, window frames and banding. A square bell tower at the northeast corner holds the main entrance, and smaller towers mark other doors. Large round-arched stained glass windows light the second-floor sanctuary, which has oak wainscoting, original-looking oak pews, a wood truss ceiling and German inscriptions. A carved stone plaque on the exterior is also in German. Cregar died during construction, and his brother Edward finished supervising the work. The building cost $25,000 apart from furnishings. Annexes and an education wing were added in the 1950s and 1960s and remodeled in 2002, but they sit on the secondary west and south sides. The church is significant as an excellent local example of the style and of Cregar's work, whose churches were a specialty.