Appalachian Churches Series – The Schaeffer Center in Frederick, Maryland: From Sunday School Hall to Community Landmark
The Schaeffer Center is not the beginning of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Frederick, but one chapter in a much longer story. The congregation traces its roots to 1738 and had moved into Frederick by 1746, making it one of the city’s oldest religious bodies. Long before the Schaeffer Center stood on East Second Street, the church had already built, rebuilt, and adapted its campus as Frederick grew from an eighteenth century town into a major county seat.
That older history matters because the building that later became the Schaeffer Center was created to serve a congregation with deep educational traditions. Evangelical Lutheran’s Sunday school had nineteenth century strength, but its origins went back still earlier. Abdel Ross Wentz’s history notes that the church organized its Sunday School Society in 1820, growing out of instructional work introduced during the ministry of Pastor David Frederick Schaeffer. The building’s later name preserved the memory of that pastor, who served the congregation for nearly three decades and remained central to its religious and educational identity.
Building for a Growing Sunday School
By the late 1880s the church’s Sunday school had outgrown older quarters. Wentz records that the need for more room became insistent under the pastorate of Luther Kuhlman, and the congregation eventually chose to erect an entirely new building rather than keep improvising within older spaces. A building committee was formed with the pastor as chairman, joined by W. Irving Parsons, John Baumgardner, Dr. U. A. Sharretts, and Charles V. S. Levy. The contract went to Luther Duvall, the cornerstone was laid on June 29, 1890, and the completed building, then called the new chapel, was dedicated on September 27, 1891.
That chronology gives the Schaeffer Center a very clear place in Frederick’s religious landscape. It rose at a moment when many American churches were rethinking how to teach children, separate age groups, and create flexible spaces for instruction. The Frederick Lutherans were not merely adding a side room. They were investing in a purpose built educational structure that expressed how seriously the congregation took organized Christian education.
Romanesque Design on East Second Street
Wentz described the new Sunday school building in proud and specific language. He called it Romanesque with modern adaptations and emphasized that its interior had been expressly designed for improved Sunday school instruction. Sliding partitions allowed rooms to be opened into one large assembly space. The main room measured about 50 by 72 feet and seated 530 people in folding chairs arranged in a semicircle around the platform. An infant room measuring 30 by 40 feet could seat about 250 children, and adjoining Bible class rooms expanded the building’s usefulness. Wentz also noted stained glass windows, careful ventilation and heating, a Brussels carpet, and a final cost of slightly more than $15,700. The tower, added after the original plans, was a gift from George Markell.
Later preservation and architectural sources help place that design within a broader regional context. Frederick’s architectural tour guide identifies the building at 26 East Second Street as an 1890 extension of the congregation’s campus designed by the Dempwolf architectural firm, and it highlights the structure’s triple windows and rounded Roman arches as features shaped by Richardsonian Romanesque influence. Rebecca Morrish Cybularz likewise identified the Frederick Sunday school as an 1890 Romanesque Revival work, while the York History Center’s Dempwolf Architectural Drawings Collection shows that drawings for the Evangelical Lutheran Church and Sunday School Building in Frederick survive in archival form.
Enlargement in the Progressive Era
The 1891 building did not remain fixed for long. The Sunday school continued to grow, and under Pastor Ulysses S. G. Rupp a Beginners’ Department was organized in 1912. Wentz’s 1920 synod history noted that $12,000 was spent to enlarge and improve the Sunday school building so that it could accommodate the new department and the expanding adult Bible classes. His later 1938 congregational history explains the work in fuller detail. Plans were approved in 1911, the new cornerstone was laid on April 28, 1912, and the enlarged building was rededicated on November 3 after construction that summer.
Those enlargements added two wings. One extension on the north reached the pavement line and created a new room for dividing the Primary Department and launching the Beginners’ Department. Another addition on the east expanded the Adult Department. At the same time the church installed a new heating and ventilating system, new rolling partitions, revarnished woodwork, and built lavatories. Wentz wrote that the total cost was about $12,000, more than two thirds as much as the original building had cost. He also recorded that 923 people were present when the enlarged building was rededicated. In 1925, the congregation expanded again by adding a west wing for adult Bible classes, showing that the structure remained a living center of congregational education well into the twentieth century.
From Sunday School Building to Schaeffer Center
Over time the old Sunday school building took on a broader role. Secondary church and local history sources identify it as the Schaeffer Center, named for Pastor David Frederick Schaeffer, and describe it as a building first erected for Sunday school work but later adapted for wider educational and service uses. By 1970 newspaper references were already describing it as a center prepared for educational activity after renovation, which suggests how far the building had moved from a single purpose classroom annex into a broader community oriented church facility.
Its later community life confirms that transition. The Literacy Council of Frederick County records that the organization operated out of private homes until 1974, when Evangelical Lutheran Church offered space in the Schaeffer Center on East Second Street. The council called that first permanent home “The Reading Center.” The church’s own campus history now describes the building as the Schaeffer Center and notes that it houses the church nursery and classrooms for Wee Folk Preschool. In that sense, the structure has remained remarkably faithful to its original purpose. Even after name changes, renovations, and new tenants, it has continued to serve teaching, learning, and care.
Graves, Memory, and the Older Landscape
One of the most striking features of the Schaeffer Center story is the way it preserves traces of an even older Frederick. Church history and local cemetery interpretation agree that the area around the building had once formed part of the Lutheran burial ground. The church states that about forty tombstones remain in the garden today, positioned either along the garden wall or the west wall of the Schaeffer Center. Mount Olivet Cemetery’s local history writing goes further, noting that the Schaeffer Center occupies most of the old graveyard site. Other church based interpretive material adds that headstones were uncovered during later renovation work. All of this means that the Schaeffer Center is not simply a Sunday school building turned community center. It is also a structure layered over one of the congregation’s earliest sacred landscapes.
A Contributing Landmark in Historic Frederick
Today the Schaeffer Center stands not as an isolated relic but as part of Frederick’s wider historic fabric. The Frederick Historic District inventory identifies the Evangelical Lutheran Sunday School at 26 to 34 East Second Street as a contributing resource, confirming that preservation officials recognize it as an important part of the district’s historic character. That status makes sense. The building ties together several stories at once: the rise of organized Sunday school education, the architectural reach of the Dempwolf firm, the changing uses of church space in the twentieth century, and the persistence of memory on an old burial ground. The Schaeffer Center matters because it still makes all of those histories visible in brick, stone, and surviving campus layout.
Sources & Further Reading
Wentz, Abdel Ross. History of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Frederick, Maryland, 1738–1938. Harrisburg, PA: Evangelical Press, 1938. https://archive.org/details/historyofevangel00went_0.
Wentz, Abdel Ross. History of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Maryland of the United Lutheran Church in America, 1820–1920. Harrisburg, PA: Evangelical Press, 1920. https://ia801302.us.archive.org/4/items/historyofevang00went/historyofevang00went.pdf.
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Frederick. “History of Sunday School.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.twinspires.org/200.
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Frederick. “History of Evangelical Lutheran Church Frederick Maryland.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.twinspires.org/elchistory.
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Frederick. “Sanctuary.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.twinspires.org/campus.
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Frederick. “Lutheran Graveyard & Cemetery.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.twinspires.org/graveyard.
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Frederick. “Record of Tombstones.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.twinspires.org/tombstones.
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Frederick. “Historic Parish Records of Evangelical Lutheran Church.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.twinspires.org/records.
Maryland State Archives. “Evangelical Lutheran Church Collection, MSA SC 4657.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://speccol.msa.maryland.gov/pages/speccol/collection.aspx?speccol=4657.
Maryland State Archives. “Frederick County Equity HS-9.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/speccol/sc6000/sc6016/county/frederick/equity/hs09.htm.
Maryland Historical Trust. “Frederick Historic District (F-3-39).” National Register Properties in Maryland. Accessed March 10, 2026. https://apps.mht.maryland.gov/nr/NRDetail.aspx?NRID=202.
Tesfaye, Abby. The City of Frederick: An Architectural Tour Guide. University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, 2014. https://www.umdsmartgrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/the_city_of_frederick_an_architectural_tour_guide_final.pdf.
York History Center. Dempwolf Architectural Drawings Collection. “Evangelical Lutheran Church and Sunday School Building.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://yorkhistorycenter.pastperfectonline.com/photo/D19B9B64-3A4E-41F4-AE4B-424215473154.
German Marylanders. “Evangelical Lutheran Church-Frederick.” July 11, 2015. https://www.germanmarylanders.org/churches/evangelical-lutheran-church-frederick.
Literacy Council of Frederick County. “Lifting Lives Through Literacy for Sixty Years.” January 8, 2024. https://www.frederickliteracy.org/lifting-lives-through-literacy-for-sixty-years/.
Literacy Council of Frederick County. “1963 – The Official Beginning.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.frederickliteracy.org/announcement/1963-2/.
Mount Olivet Cemetery. “A Patriot in the Pulpit.” August 25, 2019. https://www.mountolivethistory.com/stories-in-stone-blog/a-patriot-in-the-pulpit.
Mount Olivet Cemetery. “McCleery’s Designs.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.mountolivethistory.com/stories-in-stone-blog/mccleerys-designs.
Weiser, Frederick S. Earliest Records of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Frederick, Frederick County, Maryland. Gettysburg, PA: Frederick S. Weiser, 1969. https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/2226495.
Index to Evangelical Lutheran Church Records, Frederick, Maryland. Baltimore, MD: Maryland Historical Society. https://archive.org/details/indextoevangelic32evan.
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Frederick, Frederick County, Maryland. August 1887. Map. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03603_001/.
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Frederick, Frederick County, Maryland. August 1897. Map. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03603_003/.
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Frederick, Frederick County, Maryland. July 1911. Map. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03603_005/.
Sanborn Map Company. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Frederick, Frederick County, Maryland. May 1930–May 1947. Map. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03603_008/.
The Frederick News-Post Archives. June 19, 1970, p. 9. https://newspaperarchive.com/the-frederick-news-post-jun-19-1970-p-9/.
The Frederick News-Post Archives. November 13, 1974, p. 39. https://newspaperarchive.com/the-frederick-news-post-nov-13-1974-p-39/.
News Newspaper Archives. September 1, 1891, p. 1. https://newspaperarchive.com/news-sep-01-1891-p-1/.
Frederick Citizen Newspaper Archives. August 23, 1912, p. 8. https://newspaperarchive.com/frederick-citizen-aug-23-1912-p-8/.
Author Note: This article traces how one nineteenth-century Lutheran Sunday school building became a lasting landmark of education, memory, and service in Frederick. It also shows how older burial ground history, church growth, and later community reuse can all survive in a single Appalachian-borderland structure.