Wesley United Methodist Church

Wesley United Methodist Church, at 1164 San Bernard Street in Austin, is a buff-colored brick building completed in 1929. The first floor sits partly below grade and holds an auditorium, classrooms and church offices, while the sanctuary is raised above. A tall tower at the northwest corner, about three stories high, marks the sanctuary entrance and has stone finials, lancet windows and a tracery oculus in its east gable. Stepped buttresses, cast-stone caps and sills, a continuous cast-stone band and lancet stained-glass windows complete the exterior. The building is unaltered and in excellent condition. The congregation formed in Austin at the end of the Civil War, first meeting in the basement of the Tenth Street Methodist Episcopal Church, South, then building a stone sanctuary at 9th and Neches streets, replaced in 1882. When the present church opened in 1929, it was one of the largest Negro churches in Texas. Samuel Huston College held classes there, and the West Texas Methodist Conference was formally organized in its facilities.