Shiloh Church, Oddfellows Lodge

Alone and austere in an empty lot, Shiloh Church is the only structure surviving from the early years of the community and is the third church on the site. Founded in 1838 beside a spring, the community was then called Shiloh and was renamed Springdale in 1872 when the town was incorporated. Construction costs for the building were shared by two Baptist congregations and a Methodist Episcopal church, with Shiloh Regular Baptist having controlling interest. Costs of repair and upkeep of the church’s upper room were shared with a Masonic lodge, which used the building, along with the church groups, for more than fifty years. In 1956 the building was sold to the International Order of Oddfellows, whose sign, with the letters IOOF, remains between the second-story windows.

The two-story rectangular frame church was built by John Pierson, Peter Van Winkle, and Chism Petross. It stands on a foundation of dressed fieldstone and is covered by a gabled roof. A box cornice terminates the modest roof overhang with brief returns at the gable end, which give a hint of classicism. First and second floors have four window bays on the north and south elevations. The simple, rectangular, open belfry has been rebuilt twice. The first floor’s beaded wood ceiling remains at its original fifteen-foot height. By the late 1920s, the church’s congregations and meetings had dwindled, and the building was abandoned. The church is now maintained by the Shiloh Museum (WA2).