Holleman Park Methodist Church

History of Holleman Park Methodist Church

The Birth of Southside Methodist

In 1913, when Miami was still a sparsely settled young city of just 9,000 residents, a small but dedicated group of Methodists began meeting regularly in a tent near the Florida East Coast (FEC) railway tracks on Southwest 8th Street. Led by temporary pastor Reverend Wilson and Sunday School superintendent Albert Munro, this developing congregation came to be known as Southside Methodist Church.

Driven by a desire to fulfill a spiritual need in the frontier town, the congregation quickly outgrew its tent. Within its first year, the church purchased a lot at the corner of 8th Street and 4th Avenue, where a supply pastor, Reverend Davis, directed the construction of a modest frame sanctuary. By 1915, the church welcomed its first official pastor, Reverend Charles Stratton Edington, who was later succeeded by Reverend Livingston Munro, brother to Albert Munro. As attendance steadily climbed, the small wooden structure had to be expanded to accommodate the growing community.

The Florida Boom and a New Identity

As thousands of newcomers streamed into Florida during the 1920s land boom, real estate promoters began rapidly developing residential subdivisions. One such planned neighborhood just southwest of the church was named Holleman Park. Recognizing the church’s growth, the pioneering Brickell family generously donated a large 100-by-150-foot lot to the congregation at the intersection of Fifteenth Road and Southwest Twelfth Street.

Under the pastorship of Reverend G. H. York, plans were made for a new church featuring a full basement beneath a main floor raised seven feet above the street. This design featured a main sanctuary with seating for 150 congregants, while the lower level housed a kitchen, dining room, social hall, classrooms, and restrooms. To fund the construction of the new structure, the church sold its original chapel with the agreement that services could continue there until the new building was complete.

Reverend Walker K. Piner, who took over as pastor in January 1925, managed the final phases of construction and the transition to the new facility. Construction wrapped up in early April 1925, and the inaugural service was held on Sunday, April 5. Designed by architect Edward Arnold Nolan and built by contractor W. A. Otter, the project totaled $50,000 under the close supervision of building committee chairman Walter Harris.

By July, the congregation had completed a nearby parsonage for Reverend Piner on Southwest Eleventh Street. Soon after the move, the congregation rebranded from Southside Methodist Church to Holleman Park Methodist Church to align with its new location in the Holleman Park subdivision.

Weathering the Depression and Decline

Like many institutions of the era, the church’s ambitious expansion left it heavily burdened with debt when the Florida real estate boom abruptly deflated, a financial strain that only deepened during the Great Depression. However, through the sacrificial giving of its members during a second pastoral term by Reverend Livingston Munro, the debt was completely cleared. Prosperity briefly returned under Reverend Millard Carson Cleveland, during whose tenure the building was officially dedicated, and payments began on a parsonage at 1130 Southwest Third Avenue. The parsonage debt was successfully discharged under Reverend William Edmund Rowell in 1944. The Miami Daily News described these years as a “period of inertia while the church drifted into decline.”

The 1950s “Resurrection” under Rev. Cross

The church’s modern revival began on Easter Sunday in 1950 with the appointment of a dynamic young minister, Reverend Walter T. Cross. A native of Branford, Florida, and a graduate of both the University of Florida and Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, Cross brought a fresh wave of enthusiasm to the stagnant parish. Under his energetic leadership, Holleman Park underwent a transformation that Joseph Faus of the Miami Daily News described as “the beginning of the resurrection.”

By January 1953, church membership had surged by over fifty percent to reach 265 congregants, while overall worship attendance doubled and prayer meeting attendance quadrupled. The church completely remodeled and repainted its large sanctuary, upgraded its kitchen, and wiped out all remaining indebtedness, leaving the thriving, debt-free church with a property valued at $50,000 and active plans to construct a brand-new educational building to house its overflowing Sunday School. The revival, though, proved short-lived. Less than ten years later, the construction of the new highway fundamentally transformed the surrounding neighborhood and reshaped the church’s future.

A Second Declination

The construction of the I-95 expressway through Brickell in the early 1960s severely impacted the Holleman Park Methodist Church. The overpass’s right-of-way consumed the church’s parking lot, leaving highway embankments just feet from the chapel’s eastern wall. This physical disruption, combined with shifting neighborhood demographics, led to a sharp drop in attendance; by the early 1960s, the congregation had shrunk to half of its 1953 peak.

Consequently, in May 1965, Holleman Park merged with Riverside Methodist Church. The Riverside trustees took control of the property and sold it that August to a group of Cuban refugees, who established the Iglesia Bautista Libra Ebenezer (Ebeneezer Free Will Baptist Church). The building sold for $26,000, a steep decline from its $50,000 valuation just a decade prior.

After decades of use, the Ebeneezer Free Will Baptist Church moved out of the former Holleman Park Methodist church in 1998. For nearly thirty years, the historic structure has remained mostly vacant, suspended in time as it waits for a new purpose, if it will even have one.

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