George Merrick, the visionary behind the City of Coral Gables, founded Coral Gables Congregational Church in 1923 to honor his father, Solomon, a Congregational minister. The church was the first public building in Coral Gables. Its Mediterranean Revival design features a grand Baroque entrance and a bell tower patterned after a tower in Seville, Spain, and its Spanish barrel roof tiles are from Cuba. It was the first church in Florida to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1960, it joined the United Church of Christ, a denomination begun by those seeking spiritual and political freedom in the United States, including the Pilgrims from England who became Congregationalists and immigrants from the German Evangelical and Reformed traditions.