Calvary Baptist Church, 1865-1945

Front inscription

Site of an African-American church organized in 1865 with Samuel Johnson as its first pastor. It met under a brush arbor and in the basement of the Mann-Simons Cottage until its first sanctuary was built in 1875. Calvary helped found Present Zion (1865), First Nazareth (1879), and Second Calvary (1889). After the first church burned in 1945 the congregation built a new sanctuary at Pine and Washington Sts. in 1950.