Wood township
The Methodist church at Woodvale, raised by a local carpenter in 1911

The Woodvale Methodist Church is a wood-frame building with its steeple set to one side, placed by the Historic American Buildings Survey at Huntingdon Square. The survey recorded it in 1989 and drew its short history from church records: the Methodist Episcopal parish at Woodvale was established in the early 1900s on land leased by the coal company, and the original building was erected in 1911 by John Deforest, a local carpenter, working with members of the congregation. In the mid 1920s a large addition was made to the original block.
The 1992 National Register nomination for the Woodvale Historic District puts the church on the north side of High Street and describes the result as an L-shaped church with the entrance tower at the juncture of the two arms. The original 1911 church was the front-facing gable section with its side tower; the long addition came in the 1920s. The nomination counts it as one of Woodvale's two churches, the other being St. Michael's Greek Orthodox, and lists it as a contributing building of the district.
The survey found the church still standing in its original condition in 1989. By then, the survey says, the Methodist churches at Woodvale and Robertsdale shared a rotating service schedule with the neighboring Broad Top and Cooks congregations, four churches on one rotation.
The original wood-frame, side-steeple building was erected in 1911 by John Deforest, a local carpenter, and members of the congregation. In the mid 1920s, a large addition was made to the original block.Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, Woodvale Methodist Church, written data pages, HABS PA-5573 data pages, page 2 · character 1,038 of the scanned text
Sources
- Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey HABS PA-5573: Woodvale Methodist Church, Huntingdon Square, Woodvale (1989)
- HABS PA-5573 Woodvale Methodist Church, written historical and descriptive data (2 pages) (1989)
- National Register of Historic Places nomination: Woodvale Historic District, reference 92000942 (1992)
Checked 2026-09-05 · Library of Congress survey record, read in full
← All stories from Wood township
Have something to add to this story, or a photograph of it? Send it here →
Photographs from Wood township
More from Wood township
Robertsdale's first theater belonged to the coal company. In 1918 the Rockhill Iron and Coal Company built the Liberty…
Wood township, The company office that became the post officeThe Rockhill Iron and Coal Company office stands on the east side of Main Street in Robertsdale, just south of the East…
Wood township, The stone company store at Main and CliffThe Rockhill Iron and Coal Company store stands at the corner of Main and Cliff streets in Robertsdale, opposite the…
Also about church
The church at Greenwood Furnace is a one-story building of rubble stone, gable end to the road, with a side entrance…
elsewhere in the county, Three Springs: the first congregationsFrom the county histories, on Three Springs borough. The passage below is printed exactly as it appears in 1883,…





