First Christian Church of Rialto is a historic church located at 201 N. Riverside Avenue in

Rialto, California Rialto is a city in San Bernardino County, California, United States, 56 miles east of Los Angeles, near the Cajon Pass, Interstate 15, Interstate 10, State Route 210 and Metrolink routes. Its population was 104,026 as of the 2020 Census, u ...

. The church was built from 1906 to 1907 to serve Rialto's First

Christian Church In ecclesiology, the Christian Church is what different Christian denominations conceive of as being the true body of Christians or the original institution established by Jesus. "Christian Church" has also been used in academia as a synonym fo ...

, which was founded in 1905. Architect H. M. Patterson designed the church in the

Late Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

style; his design also features elements of the

American Craftsman American Craftsman is an American domestic architectural style, inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, which included interior design, landscape design, applied arts, and decorative arts, beginning in the last years of the 19th century. Its ...

style. The church's design features a

gable roof A gable roof is a roof consisting of two sections whose upper horizontal edges meet to form its ridge. The most common roof shape in cold or temperate climates, it is constructed of rafters, roof trusses or purlins. The pitch of a gable roof ca ...

with a corner tower, pointed arch stained glass windows, and louvered vents, all characteristic Gothic Revival features. The Craftsman influence on the design can be seen in its redwood shingled body and roof, its overhanging eaves with ornamental

bracket A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...

s, and its decorative stickwork. The congregation owned the church until 1964, when it was purchased by the City of Rialto to avoid its demolition. It is currently used as a community center. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 20, 2003.

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* * Churches in San Bernardino County, California National Register of Historic Places in San Bernardino County, California Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in California Churches completed in 1907 Carpenter Gothic church buildings in California {{California-church-stub