State Street Methodist Episcopal Church Fulton, New York

Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

The State Street Methodist Episcopal Church is architecturally significant as a local example of an architect-designed Romanesque inspired religious building in the city of Fulton. Designed by prominent local architect JH Seeber in 1894, the church was built for a congregation that dated back to 1826. Seeber (1853-1936) had a productive and varied career that spanned 45 years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He designed wide range of buildings from factories to private houses, public buildings and churches-an obituary in the April 17, 1936 edition of the Syracuse Journal noted that he designed practically all of Oswego's churches and business buildings. In his design for the State Street Methodist Episcopal Church Seeber applied hallmarks of the Romanesque Revival, a popular style for religious buildings in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Elements of the Romanesque include rounded arch and circular openings, tripartite arrangements, monochromatic masonry walls with belt courses, and the church's asymmetrical towers. In addition, the building provides an example of distinct Methodist auditorium architecture in its stylistic Akron Plan construction of the late nineteenth century/ early twentieth century. It retains substantial integrity to its period of significance and remains a distinguished architectural landmark in the city of Fulton.