From a 'Mission' to Community Presence: North Shore Presbyterian Celebrates 90 Years in Shorewood

In 1921, Arthur H. Bartelt noticed children playing on the streets of Shorewood on a Sunday morning.

Bartelt banded with a committee of church members from the Westminster Presbyterian Church on Milwaukee’s east side to establish a “Mission” Sunday school in the village, founded in a small storefront near what is now Capitol Drive and Stowell Avenue.

A few weeks later, on a Friday evening in mid-June, those residents held Shorewood Presbyterian Church's first service at 518 Atwater Road.

And 90 years later, the church now named has made its presence felt far outside the walls of its church — in the community and beyond via mission trips.

"We call ourselves the 'covenant family' because we have people of all ages from newborns all the way to older people," said longtime church member Marilyn John. "We have our charter member who was 7 in 1922 and is coming to service on Sunday."

The church is holding events this week to commemorate 90 years in Shorewood, including a garden party on Wednesday, a church picnic on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. North Shore Presbyterian’s former associate pastor, Zane Buxton, who was part of the church in the 1970s, will attend as a guest preacher at the 10:30 a.m. service on Sunday.

Humble beginnings

After its small beginnings in a tiny storefront in Shorewood, the congregation quickly outgrew the building and went to village leaders for help.

Their solution: Presbyterians would gather in Shorewood Village Hall for worship and pack the local police department’s jail cells for Sunday school lessons.

A year later, church members and leaders purchased a plot of land at the southeast corner of East Kenmore Place and North Oakland Avenue for $2,600.

Church service moved from Village Hall to a large “circus” tent on the corner, though “the congregation didn’t appreciate the many mosquitoes,” the church's records show. The tent reportedly blew down, and after six to eight months, leaders decided to erect the congregation’s first church.

Ground was broken on Shorewood Presbyterian’s new $20,000 church in 1923, and the first service held a short time later under Rev. C. A. Carriel in 1924.

“With the Sunday school marching over from village hall in a body, Shorewood Presbyterians will meet Sunday for opening services in the new church building erected in less than a year,” reads an article lining the church's walls, which details the opening service in Shorewood’s “Little White Church.”

Longtime church member Donald Nelson said he fondly remembers attending Sunday school in the church.

"When I was young ... we always had Sunday school classes in the basement in the kitchen amongst the pots and pans," Nelson reminisced. "I always remembered playing with the pots and pans when we were supposed to be listening."

Ready for a new home

The church sought out three architects to remodel the building shortly after World War II, and was able to weather the Great Depression. But, continual growth of the congregation would eventually pave the way to the church's current location, and its current name.

Church leaders sold the "Little White Church" in 1951 to the East Side Hebrew School. The building now houses the and .

"We moved across the street to a bigger building and changed the name to North Shore Presbyterian because we had people coming from all over the area," John said.

Their new church took two years to build, but more than 1,000 people attended the dedication of the new facility at Bartlett and Kenmore Avenue when it opened in the early 1950s. 

Several years later, the church added another wing to its current location, in the wake of the quickly growing membership and Sunday school.

The church has since added a patio and elevator, expanded its offerings of cultural and educational activities, and its membership continues to grow with members coming in from as far as Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana.

“They add so much to the church,” said church member Dorothy Hoffmann.

Hoffmann added the church gives back to the community in a variety of ways. Last year the church supplied about 900 homemade cookies to people volunteering with Habitat for Humanity.

"We had a youth group go down to help when (Hurricane) Katrina hit," she added.

The church also participates in charitable activities with Shoreline Interfaith, the Milwaukee Food Pantry, the Gathering and the Peace Learning Center.

To mark the anniversary, village officials have declared June 16 as North Shore Presbyterian Church Day in Shorewood.