Eldbrooke United Methodist Church began about 1835, when Methodists gathered at the Loughborough Road home of Philip L. Brooke, then built the simple wooden Mount Zion Methodist Episcopal Church on land bought from the Murdock family. During the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, Union troops used the church as a guardhouse, storehouse, hospital, and mess hall, and later two Rhode Island regiments established Camp Frieze around the church and along River Road westward to Fort Bayard. Some Union soldiers took food and other goods from Tenleytown residents, angering wealthy slaveholding inhabitants who sympathized with the South; Ann Forrest Green of nearby Rosedale condemned the war and the thousands of Union troops passing her home "shouting and shooting" at random. Damage from wartime use led the congregation to erect a new building in 1866, and when that church was enlarged in 1899 it was renamed to honor Aquila Eld and Philip L. Brooke. The large Spanish Mission style sanctuary dates from 1926. The Methodist church closed in 2005 as membership dwindled, and the City Church opened there in 2008. Nearby, the Methodist Cemetery contains two centuries of tombstones, many bearing familiar Tenleytown names; it was open to all, its last burial took place in 1989, and after a period of neglect Audrey Bates Schwartz helped spur its restoration in 2001 with assistance from Columbian Harmony Society.