Third Reformed Church

Under the leadership of the Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte, founder of the Holland colony, Third Reformed Church was organized on September 9, 1867. Its first house of worship, measuring 90 feet long, 56 feet wide, and 32 feet high, was erected on this site, but the great Holland fire of October 8 and 9, 1871 destroyed it. On January 2, 1873, a high wind demolished the newly erected framework of a second building. The present church was dedicated on November 25, 1874. Built in the carpenters' Gothic style, it has a balloon frame, vertical battened exterior walls, buttresses rising in pinnacles above the roof, and a steepled belltower added in 1891. A parish hall and education facilities were built in 1952, and during the 1967-68 centennial observance the building underwent extensive restoration. From its beginning, the congregation showed a progressive spirit, organizing a Sunday School with Isaac Cappon, a Holland industrialist and the city's first mayor, as superintendent. In 1872 the church helped spur creation of a $30,000 endowment fund for Hope College. Mission work also took hold quickly: Miss Elizabeth Cappon went to Amoy, China, as a missionary teacher in 1891, and nearly 125 men and women followed into Christian ministry at home and abroad. Reflecting changing language patterns, it became the first Dutch-immigrant congregation in the community to use English exclusively, and it adopted the motto, "To know Him and to make Him known."

Holland, Michigan · United States