Starting by the Missouri River in 1854, Omaha was a real estate speculation that just spread and spread. As it grew, it consumed land through Douglas County. It took about 35 years to get to North 52nd Street, and when it got there, a new suburb was platted. It needed churches. This is a history of Dundee Methodist Church.
Growing Too Fast?
Platted in 1888, the Dundee Place suburb was planned to be exclusive, higher end, and strictly white. Doctors, business managers, and other high-end Omahans wanted to escape downtown, so they built fine homes in this new western suburb. It became on of the city’s first streetcar suburbs with a line straight up Dodge Street right to it.
Originally, plans for the Dundee Place Methodist Episcopal Church existed sometime before 1894. However, the congregation wasn’t successful enough to warrant a mention in the newspaper for the next 25 years. At some point in there, the older McCabe Methodist congregation, with a church at S. 41st and Leavenworth, merged with the Dundee congregation.
The Bungalow House Church
In 1923, there was an active Dundee Place Methodist Episcopal Aid Society, which led the movement to open a new church. The first minister was brought from western Nebraska to Omaha that year. Rev. William St. John Sanders (1875-1925) was a Methodist church starter from English who’d launched a few congregations, and had big plans for Dundee. Unforunately, his ministry was cut short by illness and he died in 1925.
Located at 5148 Dodge Street, the new congregation met in a house on the northeast corner of North 52nd and Dodge. An article said, “This church is unique among Omaha churches in that it is a church in a home, equipped with a Sunday School, Young People’s Society, and every facility of the church. It was formerly the Cornish residence.”…