Grosse Pointe Memorial Church

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

A group of Grosse Pointe residents founded this congregation as a nondenominational church in 1865, and two years later they built a small white wooden Gothic chapel on land donated at Lake Shore and Kerby, a building so beloved it became known as the Little White Grosse Pointe Memorial Church. A larger stone and timber building went up on the same site in 1894, and the congregation reorganized as Presbyterian in 1920. In 1923 the church hired noted architect William E. N. Hunter to design an entirely new complex, completed by 1927, that still stands today. Before that rebuilding, a boy named John Macurdy sang soprano in the church choir in the 1930s, and its director, Marie Curtis, was the one who first urged him to take voice lessons, setting him on the path to a celebrated career as a bass at the Metropolitan Opera. The church earned National Register of Historic Places listing in 1993.

1. Congregation founded in 1865 as a nondenominational church
2. Rebuilt by architect William E. N. Hunter, 1923–1927
3. John Macurdy sang in the boys' choir here in the 1930s
4. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993