Then and Now: St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Amarillo, Texas

One of Amarillo's churches that has beautiful architecture is St. Andrews Episcopal Church.

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St. Andrews was created in 1891, and many years later the first St. Andrews Church was built at 9th and Fillmore. The church then moved to its current location, 16th and Georgia, and a new building was built in the 1920s.   In 1951 they opened St. Andrews Episcopal School.  It started with just kindergarten, and through the years they added grades 1-6.  As the grade levels were added eventually a new building had to be built to hold all the classrooms and grade levels.  Students at St. Andrew's Episcopal School had their first classes in the new building in 1986.  They eventually added 7th-8th grades to the school.

As for the church, a fire ignited around 4:40 am, on Sunday, February 11, 1996, and destroyed the church.  Parishioners who didn't know about the fire began showing up for church later that morning and were met with the devastation.   Luckily, because of the school,  the church was able to hold its services in the school gym until the church could be rebuilt.

Six years after the fire, St. Andrews Episcopal Church was once again whole and their beautiful church opened and they no longer had to meet in the gym.

According to Overland Architecture who built the new church after the fire,

Overland developed a style they called “Palo Duro Gothic” referencing the sweeping canyon in the Texas Panhandle.

Then on May 4, 2023, the church was broken into and vandalized.  The vandalism included the destruction of sacramental items, the baptismal font, the altar, and the processional cross.