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Second Baptist Church

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1857, 1880, 1917, 1926 addition; 1968 addition, Sims-Varner and Associates with Nathan Johnson(?). 441 Monroe Ave.
  • (Photograph by Carolyn A. Nelson)

Second Baptist Church serves Detroit's oldest African American Baptist congregation. It was organized in 1836 by thirteen former slaves who had been members of First Baptist Church. Its members met in various halls and schools until 1857, when the group purchased the Zion Reformed (Evangelical) Church. Here on January 1, 1863, Detroit blacks held the first public celebration of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. An addition in 1880 converted the one-story, gable-roofed limestone church into a two-story building with an auditorium. After a fire partially destroyed the church in 1917, a new structure was built around the shell of the 1880 building. In 1968 a large, four-story office and educational wing with projecting flat roof, asymmetrical composition, and cantilevering was built east of the church to the plans of Howard F. Sims and Harold F. Varner, leaders in what was then Detroit's major African American architectural firm, Sims-Varner and Associates.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Kathryn Bishop Eckert
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Data

What's Nearby

Globe Tobacco Company Building
Detroit Cornice and Slate Company Building
St. Mary's Catholic Church
Wayne County Building (Wayne County Courthouse)
Music Hall

Citation

Kathryn Bishop Eckert, "Second Baptist Church", [Detroit, Michigan], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MI-01-WN39.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Michigan

Buildings of Michigan, Kathryn Bishop Eckert. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012, 72-73.

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