The first services held at the newly finished Prospect Avenue Congregational Church at 29th and Prospect were morning services July 21, 1907, conducted by the pastor, Rev. Dr. E. F. Schwab, a graduate of the Chicago Theological Seminary. (Mayor Beardsley was the speaker at the services that evening.) The completion of the new church was the result of the work of a faithful little band of earnest church workers who had been worshiping in a hall at 26th and Prospect. Work on the building, which cost $35,000, was begun in 1906 and the congregation, numbering about 200, began their tenure in the new building practically out of debt. Nearly a quarter-century later the church merged with the Ivanhoe Park Congregational Church at 39th and Michigan. A formal ceremony was held Nov. 9, 1929, and the pastors of the two churches, the Rev. Roy O. Chaney of Ivanhoe and the Rev. Thorpe Bauer of Prospect became associated in the ministry of the Ivanhoe Church. Today the old Prospect Avenue stone church (as pictured) is still in use by the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, which presently is constructing a new building just north of the old church. Kansas City Star, May 14, 1977.
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