Grace Episcopal Church

As small communities like Minnewaukan were springing up on the North Dakota prairie, Episcopalians made a valiant effort to establish churches. The Protestant Episcopal Church even commissioned a cathedral car—a railroad car outfitted with chairs, reed organ, and liturgical furniture—in order to hold services at various remote locations. Grace Episcopal is typical of Episcopal church design at the turn of the twentieth century, incorporating Gothic Revival detailing, a bell tower entrance, and expressive use of materials. Parishioners brought the granite stones to the site for this dressed stone church that rests on a fieldstone foundation, and the stones were dressed and laid by local stonecutter Kolstad. Large rocks were used for the lower tiers, with smaller stones as the walls progressed. Six cut-stone buttresses support the north wall and one buttress braces the southeast corner. The steeply pitched roof hugs the paired windows along the side elevations, nearly hiding their pointed arches. Exterior detailing on the church includes simple wood trim and decorative wood shingles at the gable ends. The bell tower, which is on the southwest corner of the church, never contained a bell because of a lack of funds. The Minnewaukan Historical Society now maintains the church as a museum.