Grace United Methodist Church is a historic

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

located at 9th and West Streets in Wilmington,

New Castle County, Delaware New Castle County is the northernmost of the three counties of the U.S. state of Delaware (New Castle, Kent, and Sussex). As of the 2020 census, the population was 570,719, making it the most populous county in Delaware, with nearly 60% of the ...

. It was designed by architect Thomas Dixon and built in 1868. It is constructed of serpentine stone of a light pea green color in the

Victorian Gothic 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. The church building measures approximately 166 feet by 102 feet, 6 inches. It features a needle

spire A spire is a tall, slender, pointed structure on top of a roof of a building or tower, especially at the summit of church steeples. A spire may have a square, circular, or polygonal plan, with a roughly conical or pyramidal shape. Spires are ...

that rises to 186 feet and is topped by a

Celtic cross The Celtic cross is a form of Christian cross featuring a nimbus or ring that emerged in Ireland, France and Great Britain in the Early Middle Ages. A type of ringed cross, it became widespread through its use in the stone high crosses er ...

. and It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1983. It was dedicated in 1868 to the Union victory at Gettysburg, which saved the city from being ransacked by the advancing Confederates.

References

United Methodist churches in Delaware Churches in Wilmington, Delaware Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Delaware Churches completed in 1868 19th-century Methodist church buildings in the United States National Register of Historic Places in Wilmington, Delaware {{Delaware-church-stub