The inaptly named Grandview Avenue is an eight-lane strip thoroughfare that courses through the near east side of Odessa. By chance, it contains a sequence of architecturally distinctive houses of worship built from the 1950s to the 1970s. The Lutheran Church of the Risen Lord (1971; 1603 N. Grandview) is a late work of J. Ellsworth Powell, who moved to Austin after Odessa’s economy contracted in the 1960s. The church is a rotated square in plan, above which the roof billows up to a central peak to architecturally embody the “risen” theme.
Powell also designed Congregation Beth El Temple (1962; 1501 N. Grandview), which features a folded plate roof above the worship space. Battered walls and vertical slit windows emphasize interiority.
St. Andrew Cumberland Presbyterian Church (1959, 1960, Peters and Fields) at 1415 N. Grandview defaults to the wide-gabled typology that said both “church” and “modern” in the 1950s and 1960s. Peters and Fields modulated the brick end walls of the church and community hall, which face Grandview, with raised vertical strips to produce scale gradation without resorting to historical models.