"The history of the First Evangelical Lutheran Church, a Romanesque brick building with stained glass windows, dates back nearly a century. In the 1920s, it was built as St. Anthony's, the first Catholic church in Fort Lauderdale, by an architect who had designed dozens of churches along Florida's east coast. After that congregation outgrew the building, they sold it for $1 to Lutherans, who had never worshipped in their own structure in Fort Lauderdale before.
They moved the building brick by brick from the Las Olas waterfront to its current location on Southeast Third Avenue. But that history seems to be lost on the Taho Group developers, who are gobbling up properties on the block and proposing a 32-story condo tower. When the First Evangelical Lutheran Church announced that it was in the process of selling the building, retired pastor Paul Pfadenhauer and local gallery owner Robin Merrill rushed to apply for historic preservation status to save the cherished structure from demolition."[1]
