Overview
McCarty Memorial Christian Church is a Gothic Revival church of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) located at 4101 West Adams Boulevard in the West Adams Terrace neighborhood of the West Adams district in Los Angeles. McCarty was founded in 1932 as a white congregation, and gained attention when it integrated and became a multi-racial congregation in the mid-1950s.
Architecture
The church was built in 1932 in the English Gothic Revival style. Among the Church's notable features are stained glass windows with intricate Gothic tracery, arcaded ambulatories, and a 130-foot landmark tower with an elaborate open belfry. The authors of An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles call McCarty an excellent example of the city's reinforced-concrete churches of the late 1920s and describe the architectural style as "Gothic, partially English, and partially French."
Early history
The church was built and paid for by Dr. and Mrs. Isaac A. McCarty, who had traveled widely in the United States and Europe "studying church architecture against the time when they were ready to further the Kingdom of God." The church was dedicated in May 1932 on the McCartys' 45th wedding anniversary. Dr. McCarty died two years later in May 1934, and his funeral was held at the church he built. The founding pastor at McCarty was Dr. Bruce Brown, who served as the pastor until 1942 and died in 1957. Brown was succeeded by Dr. O. James Sowell, who was pastor from 1942 until 1952, when he left the church to become an evangelist. He was next followed by the Rev. James Clark Brown, who served as pastor for seven months from 1952 to 1953.
Integration under the Rev. Kring Allen
The Rev. Kring Allen was credited with successfully integrating the McCarty Church. Interviewed by the Los Angeles Times in 1967, Allen, who had been the pastor at McCarty since 1954, noted: "Our neighborhood is 85% Negro. So's our church, I would guess, although I don't know. You lose your color sense when you stop thinking about it. I lost mine."
See also
* List of Registered Historic Places in Los Angeles People *Don A. Allen, member of the California State Assembly and of the Los Angeles City Council in the 1940s and 1950s, attended McCarty Memorial