Historic Register Tour - Liberty Park Methodist Church

HISTORIC NAME	Liberty Park Methodist Episcopal Church
COMMON NAME	Liberty Park United Methodist Church
DATE BUILT	1911
ARCHITECT/BUILDER	* see Statement below
PROPERTY STYLE	Gothic Revival
ON THE SPOKANE REGISTER	Yes - added 5/13/02
NATIONAL REGISTER	No
IN A DISTRICT	No
DISTRICT	No
NEIGHBORHOOD	East Central

STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE

Liberty Park Methodist Episcopal Church is architecturally significant in its clear illustration, though distinctive characteristics, of early twentieth-century Gothic Revival architecture, and as a rare local example of the “Akron Plan,” a style of interior layout that became the standard for Methodist and other Christian denominations by the 1890s. The Akron Plan is so named because the Akron, Ohio, architect, George W. Kramer, and a Methodist minister, Lewis Miller, popularized it. Distinctive components of the plan include a corner pulpit platform and radial orientation of pews. The architect of the church has not been documented, though family tradition holds that Leonard Starr, an architect and a member of the Liberty Park Church, designed it. Starr worked as a draftsman for notable Spokane architect Albert Held in 1909 and 1910 and also did occasional work for Cutter and Malmgren, Spokane’s most celebrated firm of architects.