Monmouth’s downtown blocks hold several 19th-century churches still in active use, their brick towers and stained glass a reminder of how quickly the town built up its civic and religious life after its 1831 founding. First United Methodist Church, at the southwest corner of Broadway and 2nd Street, is the oldest congregation in Monmouth, organized in 1834. Its current sanctuary the congregation’s third home was dedicated in January 1890: a neo-Gothic building designed by Weary & Kramer of Akron, Ohio, and built of 350,000 red bricks fired at Monmouth’s own Radmacher brickyard.
Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, a few blocks away at Broadway and B Street, traces back to 1856, when a visiting priest said Mass under a cottonwood tree on the town square and in the Warren County Courthouse before the parish had a building of its own. A frame church went up in 1864; the current brick church, still in use today, had its cornerstone laid in 1883.
Faith United Presbyterian Church, at 200 South 8th Street, has a more layered history: it’s the product of a 1963 merger of four of Monmouth’s Presbyterian congregations, but its sanctuary is older still built in 1867 for Second United Presbyterian Church, a congregation founded in 1862 specifically to serve Monmouth College, with the college’s first president serving as its first pastor.
All three remain active congregations today, not museums check with each parish directly about visiting hours or services.