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Bowling Green - Warren County Bicentennial Celebration



National Register of Historic Places:
Warren County Churches

Cecilia Memorial Presbyterian Church
(Cecilia Memorial Christian Church)

716 College Street, Bowling Green. One of the oldest existing church buildings in the county, the Cecilia Memorial Presbyterian Church represents the archetypical Greek Revival brick box church preceded by a full-width portico. The windows were altered from rectangular-shaped openings to their present pointed-arch form. Named in honor of Cecilia Lillard, one of the organizers of the congregation, Cecilia Memorial Church was established in 1868. In 1879 the congregation bought this structure from the Christian congregation, which had erected the building about 1845. The church is one of very few nineteenth century structures remaining on College Street between Fountain Square Park and the Barren River. (National Register)

Burton Memorial Baptist Church
"Drakes Creek Baptist Church"

Cemetery Road, Bowling Green. Established in 1850 by the United Baptists, the congregation of the Burton Memorial Baptist Church was originally known as Drakes Creek Baptist Church. The first church building was of frame construction, and in 1909 W. H. Burton sponsored the building of a new stone church named in memory of his parents. Competed in 1911 by Murphy Brothers Company, the building used Warren County stone exclusively and is one of only two historic churches in the county built of stone. The outstanding architectural design and workmanship of the stone church is supplemented and balanced by the sensitively detailed, shingled caretaker's cottage and by the fine iron and stone fence that surrounds the church on three sides. The church interior is essentially intact, and a later recent rear addition has left the rear wall of the church exposed in the interior if the addition. (National Register)

Fairview Methodist Church

S.R. 526, Oakland vicinity. The significance of the Fairview Methodist Church lies in its fine state of preservation and in its strength of design, perhaps the best in the county's late nineteenth century frame churches. It is traditional in form and representative of vernacular wooden church architecture. Because of its siteing on a flat, intensively cultivated plain, it is a visual focus on the landscape for miles around. (National Register)

State Street Baptist Church
(First Colored Baptist Church)

340 State Street, Bowling Green. The State Street Baptist Church was the first formally organized church for blacks in Bowling Green. It was established in 1838 from the slave membership of the First Baptist Church. Built in 1898 on land donated to the black congregation in 1867, the present structure is architecturally significant as a robust, turn-of-the-century example of Gothic-Romanesque Revival styling. (National Register)

Mount Olivet Cumberland Presbyterian Church

S.R. 526, Bowling Green. A contemporary of the Green River Union Meeting House, the Mt. Olivet Presbyterian Church was completed in 1845 by local brick masons Veet Patillo and C. A. Carter. Bricks used in constructing the church were made on the farm of George Bratton. This structure's Greek Revival stylistic traits were compromised by the replacement of the original two rectangular-headed doors with a single, central round-headed door. One of only five traditional meeting house forms in the county, this building is the only one constructed of brick. (National Register)

Oak Forest Church

West of Riverside, Riverside vicinity. Reportedly built following the 1891 organization of the present Oak Forest Union Church congregation, this log church is significant either as one of the latest examples of log construction in the state or, if it was actually built for an earlier congregation, as one of a small number of surviving log churches in Kentucky. The congregation consisted of members of the Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist Episcopal and M. E. South Churches. The church deed dates to 1883 and church tombstones to 1880. (National Register)

Smiths Grove Baptist Church

Main and Fifth Streets, Smiths Grove. The congregation of Smiths Grove Baptist Church was organized in 1812, and the present building was designed by Creedmore Fleenor and constructed in 1898. In both the massing and detail, the designer of the church showed an awareness of the picturesque and even startling effects possible in Gothic styling. (National Register)

Smiths Grove Presbyterian Church

College and Second Streets, Smiths Grove. Stylistically pretentious churches in Warren County outside of Bowling Green are rare. The Smiths Grove Presbyterian Church is, with the exception of the idiosyncratic raking corbel table in the gable front, typical of end-of-the-century Gothic Revival churches. The corner entry tower serves as a local landmark, the building is essentially intact and there is a sympathetic rear addition. (National Register)

St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church

430 Church Street, Bowling Green. 1870-1884, Frank Kister Sr. and Jr., architects. Brick, limestone trim; two stories, rectangular, gabled roof, gable end double-door entrances with modified trefoil transom lights set in pointed stone architraves; three-story projecting entrance tower with vestigial corner buttresses, louvered belfry openings and pyramidal roof; slender foliated side openings set between buttresses, corbel table at cornice; exuberant ribbed and frescoed interior; replaced earlier churches; steeple replaced, 1923; interior renovations, 1937 and 1959. High Victorian Gothic elements. Congregation organized in 1859 to serve the many Irish Catholics engaged in building the Louisville and Nashville railroad. (National Register, 1976)

The Historic Church descriptions were taken from the Landmark Association's Architecture
of Warren County, Kentucky 1790 - 1940, Smiths Grove, Ky: AC Publications, 1984.

National Register || Residences || Churches || Brinton B. Davis Thematic Scheme at WKU || Districts

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Page last modified 22 October 1997