University Circle United Methodist Church traces its history back to 1831, when the earliest Methodist gatherings in Cleveland were held at Doan's Corners. The church was christened Epworth-Euclid Methodist Church in 1919 with the merger between two historic congregations — Euclid Avenue Methodist Episcopal and Epworth Memorial Church. The latter congregation was the birthplace of the Epworth League, an international Christian youth movement.
Soon after the merger, the congregation commissioned a church design from the noted architect Bertram Goodhue shortly before his death in 1924. The Cleveland-based Walker & Weeks firm saw the project to completion four years later. Goodhue's towering steeple, modeled after Mont Saint Michel in France, was dubbed the "Holy Oil Can" by students on the Western Reserve campus — a nickname still used today.
In 2009, the members of Epworth-Euclid United Methodist Church and First United Methodist Church of Cleveland voted to combine congregations to form University Circle United Methodist Church the following year. Unfortunately, however, the church's subsequent decline in membership led to its closing in 2026, leaving the "Holy Oil Can" empty just two years shy of its one-hundredth anniversary.
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