Niagara Falls Review e-edition

The Lutheran congregation that prayed in a carriage house

DENNIS GANNON CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST DENNIS GANNON IS A MEMBER OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF ST. CATHARINES. GANNOND2002@YAHOO.COM

St. Catharines did not have its first Lutheran congregation until the second decade of the 20th century.

In 1912 Pastor Otto Lossner, a resident of Snyder who served Lutheran churches there and in Jordan, became aware that there were Lutherans living in St. Catharines whose religious needs were not being served.

In December of that year, Pastor Lossner began to hold weekly services for those faithful in a meeting room on the third floor of the former St. Catharines Standard building at 17 Queen St.

In January 1914 the worshippers there were formally established as a congregation in their own right — Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church. They then set about finding a proper church building and obtaining their own resident minister to succeed Lossner.

In July 1914 this new congregation bought a building at 14 Gerrard St. which for the previous 40 years had been the carriage house for the fine home on the southeast corner of Welland Avenue and Gerrard Street (72 Welland Ave., the building which today houses the offices of Newman Brothers).

Steps were immediately taken to covert the former coach house into a proper house of worship. A photo of the building from the 1930s shows a small, two-storey brick building with a mansard roof surmounted by a cupola. (In spite of its humble, non-ecclesiastical origins, the building seems to have served the congregation well — they remained there for nearly three decades, 1914 to 1941.)

Within a few months of the purchase of the new building Pastor Arnold Mueller arrived to become this city’s first resident Lutheran pastor. Mueller’s first years here were later recalled as a “period of blight” — not due to any deficiencies on his part, but because his arrival coincided with the outbreak of the First World War. For too many local citizens then, the word Lutheran meant “German,” and that was not helpful when the nation was at war with the German Empire.

But the war ended in late 1918. With peace re-established the congregation could grow without any shadow of suspicion hindering its development any longer. So much did the church prosper that by the late 1930s the congregation was clearly outgrowing its small Gerrard Street building. It remedied that by purchasing a lot at the southeast corner of Geneva and Junkin streets and there built a fine stone church, which was dedicated in May 1941.

Outgrowing that in turn, the congregation in the late 1950s built its current church at 140 Russell Ave., dedicated in July 1958. (TIts former Geneva Street building is now occupied by First Church of Christ, Scientist.)

And what became of Christ Lutheran Church's first home at 14 Gerrard St.? After remaining vacant for a time, the building became a residence, initially being converted into a duplex. The old building still stands there today. It has lost the cupola that once stood atop the building, and its original vestibule at the front door has been removed, but the building’s distinctive mansard roof still makes it easily recognizable.

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2022-05-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-05-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

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