This grand old church, now an outpost of River City Church, was completed in 1900, when it had a bell chamber and steeple on its street corner tower. A lightening strike did away with that, leaving the Romanesque building with an incomplete feeling. My partner, WMP, attended there, and he left a 65+ year record as church mainstay. Fifty years ago he undertook to design and have built a handsome 75-foot high copper clad replacement spire to restore the original image. He and I went into a field in North Montgomery to inspect the finished work, even walking down inside the mammoth structure to verify its fineness. A day later, while the steeple was suspended 100-feet above Dexter Avenue in the process of erection, the lift bolt suddenly snapped and the entire thing suddenly plummeted onto the asphalt, smashed. What a trauma! But William persevered and completed the project despite the setback.

-Charles Humphries