In the mid-nineteenth century, Catholic residents of Hampden belonged to the St. Mary of the Assumption parish in Govans, a distant walk from the burgeoning neighborhood. Since the industrial mill village had been built by the owners of the mills for their predominantly white Protestant workers, they had made no accommodations for Catholics to worship in the area. At least until an Irish-Catholic immigrant named Martin Kelly started a small Catholic community. Kelly erected the first non-company housing along Falls Road east of the mills, which grew into the Hampden we know today.
Kelly鈥檚 extended family occupied many of the sixteen homes Kelly erected in the 1850s. Others were likely owned by mill employees who could afford to leave the mill villages or by shopkeepers selling goods to other residents in the mill villages. Kelly built a large home for himself on Hickory Avenue, known colloquially as the Kelly Mansion. Fellow Catholics likely knew the house well. Seeking a place to worship closer to home, Kelly persuaded a priest to hold services in his home's parlor, using the piano as an altar. After Kelly's death, his son John donated the land and funds for a new Catholic church in Hampden called St. Thomas Aquinas.
Rev. Thomas Foley laid the cornerstone of St. Thomas Aquinas Church on May 12, 1867. The building, designed by famed local architect George Frederick and constructed at the cost of $20,000, was completed on June 18, 1871. Archbishop Martin John Spalding attended the dedication.
Today, the church complex consists of the church, rectory, school, and convent. The school was founded in 1873 and the current building went up in 1937. At the time, the school had 320 pupils and a staff of eight, hired from the School Sisters of Notre Dame. In 1973, St. Thomas Aquinas clustered with nearby parishes. Grades one to five attended St. Thomas Aquinas, while middle school students attended St. Bernard's in Waverly. Middle schoolers returned to St. Thomas Aquinas in 1996, seven years after St. Bernard's had become a Korean National Parish (which closed just a year later in 1997).
The school reached a crisis point in 2010 when the archdiocese closed thirteen of sixty-four parochial schools in Baltimore. St. Thomas Aquinas avoided closure due to the leadership of its principal, Sister Marie Rose Gusatus. The school took in students from surrounding parishes. However, the school only remained open for another six years.
In 2016, the Archdiocese closed St. Thomas Aquinas School along with Seton Keough High School in Southwest Baltimore and John Paul Regional School in Woodlawn. While the archdiocese claimed enrollment in Catholic schools had begun to stabilize after decades of declining enrollment, funding remained low as enrollment costs were kept low to make the schools more affordable. Also, in response to the need for costly improvements, the archdiocese decided it would be best to consolidate the schools.
Union Baptist Church traces its origins to 1852 and a group of fifty-seven worshipers meeting in a small building on Lewis Street. It was the fifth oldest African American congregation in Baltimore and financed entirely by African Americans. The first pastor of the church was the Reverend John Carey. In 1866, the Lewis Street congregation merged with members of Saratoga Street African Baptist Church, forming Union Baptist Church. When Rev. Harvey Johnson arrived in 1872, he found a modest congregation of perhaps 270 members.聽
Harvey Johnson鈥檚 dealings with the Maryland Baptist Maryland Baptist Union Association (MBUA) in particular, and with prejudiced white Baptists in general, served as a proving ground for his leadership and vision. He took the skills honed in the battle for equality among all Baptists and transfered those skills as he entered the fight for equaliy among all people. Johnson鈥檚 original cause of friction with the MBUA stemmed from its paternalistic approach to black people and black Baptist churches. Not only did black ministers categorically receive less pay than white counterparts, but black churches were slow to realize full and equal political priviledges within the state denomination governing apparati. This problem was more troubling once, thanks in no small part to Johnson himself, black numbers in the state鈥檚 Baptist churches began grow. By 1885, Union Baptist's membership surpassed two thousand members for the first time.
Rev. Johnson's response to this discrimination was two-fold: economic independence and institutional autonomy. This situation exploded throughout the 1890s as Johnson urged black congregations to free themselves of white purse strings, and to get out of the Union Association altogether. One of Rev. Johnson's most controversal speeches brought this issue to fore. In September 1897, speeking in Boston, Johnson made, "A Plea For Our Work As Colored Baptists, Apart From the Whites." Johnson called for black Baptists to move as a group toward self-determination.
The Union Baptist Church鈥檚 Gothic design features stained glass windows created by John LeFarge, the renowned artist known as the inventor of the art of using opalescent stained glass.
Completed in 1872 as a 鈥淐athedral of Methodism,鈥 the Norman-Gothic Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church was a signature achievement for the noted Baltimore architects Thomas Dixon and Charles L. Carson. It was also at first an immense source of aggravation to its neighbors.
By the 1870s, Mount Vernon had become the place to live for Baltimore鈥檚 elite, and Mount Vernon Place with the Washington Monument was the central jewel of the community. The church鈥檚 heavy presence off the north park, green serpentine stone amidst the Baltimore brick and more subdued color palate, and steeple that reached nearly to the top of President Washington鈥檚 head sparked a great deal of angst. The fact that the church replaced the house where Francis Scott Key passed away did not help sooth the neighbors. The house was the home of Key鈥檚 daughter and her husband, Elizabeth Phoebe Key and Charles Howard.
After its early days, however, the church has become a central and admired part of Mount Vernon Place. Architecturally, it was built of striking green serpentine stone, as well as buff, olive and red sandstone. Architects Dixon and Carson embellished it with polished granite columns and carved designs taken from nature. Its many gothic details of flying buttresses, a tower, and arches are purely esthetic in function, as the building is constructed over an iron framework. There are even grotesque stone faces above the windows on the west front (three full cut, two in profile) said to be likenesses of prominent persons living at the time the church was built. On the inside, the church is notable for its iron supporting columns, carved wooden beams, and stained glass cross window over the pulpit.
In addition to its architecture, the church鈥檚 congregation has made its mark on Baltimore as well. The group began in a building on Lovely Lane (intersecting today鈥檚 Redwood Street downtown) and is credited with launching the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States in 1784. The current church on Mount Vernon Place is the congregation鈥檚 fourth home. In addition to its spiritual work, the congregation has provided innumerable secular services to Baltimore. In World War II, the church provided beds, food and entertainment to servicemen returning from the front.
Beginning in the 1970s, they led efforts to help runaway teenagers and victims of drug abuse, and began a service organization to engage young Baltimoreans in helping their city. The congregation today continues its service to Baltimore in many ways, including opening to 91视频 and the curious public.
A devout Methodist, Colonel John Berry purchased the site of this church in the early 1800s. Tired of traveling three miles from Calverton Heights to the closest Methodist Episcopal Church, Berry decided to establish a new chapel close to his Baltimore County home.聽A stone chapel was dedicated in the fall of 1836, the church expanded in 1878, and in the 1880s, a Sunday School building was constructed.
By 1920,聽the congregation had outgrown the stone chapel. Even with several later additions since 1835, the building seated only聽275 people鈥攁 fraction聽of the over 450 Methodist families in the parish. The congregation decided to demolish the original chapel and construct a new church.
The present Gothic Revival structure was designed by G.N. MacKenzie and Wyatt & Nolting, a prominent local architectural firm. An article published in The Christian Advocate聽following the completion of the church stated that "A fine plant has been erected with adequate Sunday school rooms, an auditorium that will seat 900, a gymnasium, and other desired features." The cornerstone was laid on July 19, 1920, and the church was dedicated on April 25, 1921.
Bishop Carr purchased the group's first church on N. Mount Street. The small congregation then left the Church of God in Christ for the doctrine of the Apostolic Doctrine in Jesus Name, and was renamed Rehoboth Church of God in Christ Jesus Apostolic. In 1945, the congregation branched off from the larger Apostolic organization, forming its own denomination. The same year, the congregation moved to another church on N. Fulton and Riggs Streets. In 1954, the congregation purchased the former Summerfield Church at 700 Poplar Grove Street, where they are still located today.
Saint Peter Claver Church at Pennsylvania Avenue and Fremont Street takes its鈥 name from a sixteenth-century Spanish priest who is considered the patron saint of slaves. The building dates back to 1888 making it the city鈥檚 second oldest African-American Roman Catholic Church. True to the inspiration of Saint Claver, the congregation and their leaders, have long been active in seeking equal rights for African Americans in Baltimore.
Father Henry Offer led the church from 1960 to 1971 and was a member of the NAACP and Urban League. In 1968, he was one of the city鈥檚 African American leaders to speak out after the riots following the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., criticizing Governor Spiro Agnew for laying blame for the unrest on local black activists. Later that same year, the parish chartered buses to transport its members, as well as community residents, to the Poor People鈥檚 March on Washington. The march, planned by the by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference before King鈥檚 death, was led by Civil Rights activist Ralph Abernathy.
In 1966, Father Philip Berrigan advocated for the disinvested urban neighborhoods from his position at the church. Berrigan, whose long career as a Catholic activist included burning Vietnam War draft cards with his brother Daniel Berrigan and others of the Catonsville Nine. In the years leading up to this, Berrigan worked from St. Peter Claver to establish the Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission and actively lobbied and demonstrated for the city鈥檚 African American communities.
Another Civil Rights activist coming from St. Peter Claver in the 1960s was Father John Harfmann. In 1967, Harfmann, who was white, worked with Black activist Dickey Burke to provide recreation opportunities in West Baltimore through Operation CHAMP. During his tenure at the church, he also participated in integration activities with church members and actively supported efforts of BUILD (Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development) to create housing, provide job opportunities, and rebuild neighborhoods in the city. At his funeral, fellow priests remembered how Harfmann was 鈥渨holly dedicated to being a priest in the African American community,鈥 and recalled him as 鈥渁 tireless fighter for justice who did things that people said were not possible.鈥
Today, the church continues their long tradition of civil rights and community activism, in part, by hosting the No Boundaries Coalition that works to unite communities around the church that have historically been divided by racial and economic barriers.
Established in 1922, Olivet Baptist Church has occupied the historic Edgewood Theatre since the late 1960s. Built in 1930, the Edgewood Theatre was designed by one of the city鈥檚 most prominent theatre architects鈥擩ohn J. Zink.
Born in Baltimore in 1886, Zink graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1904 and started work with architect William H. Hodges and the local architecture firm Wyatt & Nolting. He began working on theatres when he joined architect Thomas W. Lamb in designing the famous Hippodrome Theatre on Eutaw Street and the Maryland Theatre in Hagerstown, Maryland. Over the next few decades, Zink and his partners designed over 200 movie theatres in cities up and down the east coast including over thirty in the Baltimore-DC area including the Senator Theatre on York Road and the Town Theatre (now known as the Everyman).
In the Edgewood Theatre's heyday, the marquee featured a tall electric sign (a near twin of the Patterson designed by Zink on Eastern Avenue). Like many smaller neighborhood theatres, the business began to struggle in the 1950s and, after a brief second life as an art house theatre in 1962, ended its life as a movie house. That same year, Bishop Wilburn S. Watson joined the Olivet Baptist Church then located in a modest building on Riggs Avenue. In the late 1960s, Bishop Watson led the effort to purchase the former theatre on Edmondson Avenue and convert the building into a new sanctuary for the congregation.
Organized in 1875 by Samuel H. Cummings at Gilmore and Mulberry Streets, the Harlem Park Methodist Episcopal Church relocated to Harlem Park in 1880 under the leadership of John F. Goucher. The church constructed a new building in 1906 under the leadership of Rev. E.L. Watson and then moved again to Harlem Avenue and Warwick Avenue under the leadership of Rev. E.P. Fellenbaum. The new building was described:
鈥淕othic in design, with an auditorium seating 800 persons. In addition, there will be an educational building, equipped with 10 rooms for Sunday-school work. In the basement will be a social hall. A recreation room with bowling alleys and a lecture room that may be converted into a gymnasium also are planned.鈥
At a mortgage burning ceremony in 1947, Fellenbaum recalled that some criticized the project, and the $100,000 mortgage, as 鈥淔ellenbaum鈥檚 Folly.鈥 The congregation laid the cornerstone for the new building at 4:00 PM on May 2, 1925. The Harlem Park Methodist Episcopal Church was dedicated at 3:00 PM on November 21, 1926 with Bishop William Fraser McDowell officiating.
In May 1953, the Harlem Park Methodist Church merged with the Grove Methodist Chapel, erected in 1857 on Johnnycake Road in Baltimore County, to form the Wesley Memorial Methodist Church in Catonsville, Maryland. Their building was offered for sale at $210,000. Bishop E.A. Love of the Washington Conference appointed the Reverend N.B. Carrington as the leader of the Union Memorial United Methodist Church and assisted in securing help from the Washington and Baltimore Conferences and the Board of Missions to purchase the property.
The church had previously moved from Pine and Franklin Streets to North and Madison Avenues in 1951 and had fewer than 100 members when it moved to Harlem Avenue in 1953. By the time of Rev. Carrington鈥檚 retirement in 1961, however, the church had grown to over 600 members. Carrigton began pastoring at Union Memorial United Methodist in 1952, and also worked as the supervisor of the AFRO鈥檚 pressroom. He later commented, 鈥淚 married, baptized and buried many of them down there 鈥 matter of fact they call me the AFRO鈥檚 chaplain.鈥 Commenting on the success of the church in paying off the building鈥檚 $225,000 mortgage in 8 years, Carrington noted, 鈥淭hose are the kind of people we have in our congregation. They wanted to get it out of the way and they worked hard to do it.鈥