FOW Tour - Centre Wheeling Fellowship, formerly St. John’s German Lutheran Church

On July 9, 2025 Friends of Wheeling toured Centre Wheeling Fellowship, Formerly St. John’s German Lutheran Church, 41 22nd Street.

German immigrants to Wheeling originally held services at irregular intervals when German pastors made the rounds of their circuits, at first worshipping in a small frame building in North Wheeling. In 1835, Rev. Andreas Schwartz became the first resident pastor, and a formal congregation was organized. Within a year, they built a structure on 18th Street, where Laughlin Chapel is now located. The cornerstone read “Erste Deutsche Lutherische Kirche in Wheeling, 1936” (First German Lutheran Church in Wheeling, 1836).

A merger in 1870 resulted in a name change to St. John’s German Evangelical Protestant Church, and the growing congregation constructed a larger Gothic-Revival building in 1872 on the corner of 17th and Market Streets, north of the Market Street Bridge. This building featured many stained-glass memorial windows, made by Artistic Glass Painting Company of Cincinnati and costing $5,500 (nearly $150,000 today). Names on those windows, often in old German text, reflect the German heritage of their donors. They include Zimmer, Schmeichel, Pfarr, Menkmöller, Schule, Berein, Schocke, Zoeckler, Neuhard, Stamm, and Stifel, to name a few.
When the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad needed the church’s location for a passenger station (now WV Northern Community College’s main building), a court case forced the sale and demolition of the church and neighboring buildings. However, the congregation was able to save many of the church’s religious objects, including the organ, the bell, the corner stone from the original church, and many of the memorial stained-glass windows. Several other windows were later added to the current church, including the two large central windows on each side of the sanctuary, four windows in the bell tower landing, four on the second level, three at the foot of the grand staircase, and two over the entrance doors.
Wheeling architect Frederick Faris designed the current structure at the corner of 22nd and Chapline Streets, dedicated in September 1908. Over the next two to three decades, the need for services in German decreased, and, on January 8, 1934, the congregation voted to discontinue all German services on a regular basis.

With a denominational merger, the congregation again changed the name on July 5, 1939, to St. Johns Evangelical and Reformed Church. In 1957 the United Church of Christ was formed, representing a merger of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church. St. Johns participated in this merger around 1961, and the name was changed to St. Johns United Church of Christ. Friends of Wheeling toured this church on July 9, 2025

Since 2019, the church is known as the Centre Wheeling Fellowship and serves the community as home to the Free Bike Depot, Helping Heroes, and a chapter of Celebrate Recovery.

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