When I walked into Rev. Karl Schwarz’s office, a 3D architectural rendering of Westminster Presbyterian sat on his coffee table. He soon explained that Jim Langford, an architect who has designed a number of churches in Dallas, including Northaven United Methodist in our neighborhood, has a child in Westminster’s preschool.
“The preschool wants to have a better entrance on the back side of the building,” Schwarz says, “and Jim was donating his time and expertise, and the more he looked at our particular facility, the more he got interested because we’re classically designed with this Georgian style, which all goes back to the Parthenon and stuff like that.
“As Jim started pulling back, he saw how it was that this church is designed to be part of this neighborhood. The front door of the church lines up with Purdue and comes back with Purdue on the other side. Before the Tollway was here, you could pull back and see how this general neighborhood was built around the church.”
This feeds into Schwarz’s comments in November’s cover story that even Devonshire neighbors who don’t attend Westminster consider it “their neighborhood church.”
Another interesting anecdote: Since the church is tucked away inside Devonshire, it has two little signs — one on Lovers and one on Northwest Highway — that denotes its presence for drivers on these main thoroughfares. The sign on Northwest Highway apparently has a tendency to blow down in high winds or bad weather, and when it does, Schwarz says, “neighbors pay to have it fixed because that’s the marker for Devonshire — the street signs aren’t as easy to see.”
