2 East Mount Vernon Place
Baltimore, MD, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church and Asbury House

Statement of Significant:

The Mt. Vernon Place United Methodist Church is the fourth home of a group from a congregation which officially organized the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States. It has always been deeply involved in the business, professional and civic life of Baltimore as well as a link with the most important figure in historic American Methodism, Francis Asbury. Its preservation as a contemporary influence is vital to the heart of Baltimore where it stands as one of the four corners of Mount Vernon Place.

During World Wars I and II as a haven for service personnel stationed temporarily in Baltimore, the church provided meals, beds and entertainment. Its facilities have been used by the Women's Civic League of Baltimore to promote the annual Flower Mart held in Mount Vernon Place, a tradition of the city for fifty years. The excellence of the music program of the Mt. Vernon Place United Methodist Church adds to the life of the city. Its Sunday Evening Club, a service organization for young adults instituted forty years ago; its Community Center which has served hundreds of inner-city children; its connection with the McKim Center; the establishment of a 1971 Downtown Crisis Center and the Fellowship of Lights group dealing with alienated youth, runaway teenagers and victims of drug abuse, contribute to ameliorating the city's needs. From the ministry and membership its men and women in the congregation have made appreciable contributions to and growth of Baltimore. "Downtown Tours" stop they do at the church's neighbors--The Peabody Conservatory, the Walters Art Gallery and the Washington Monument.

In Lovely Lane Chapel--no longer extant and not to be con- fused with Lovely Lane Methodist Church on St. Paul Street-- in 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church was established and the Reverend Francis Asbury was ordained as its first Bishop. "City Station" on Light Street was the congregation's next home from which a group moved "uptown" to Charles and Fayette Streets where began the "Society" as it was called, which in 1872 became the Mt. Vernon Place Methodist Church as the re- sult of a final move. A bronze plaque on the front of the church notes that the building was erected on the site of the home of Charles Howard in which Francis Scott Key died on January 11, 1843. The cornerstone of this Gothic-style structure was laid on September 26, 1870, an innovation for the Methodists of that period. The building was designed by Thomas Dixon and the church completed in 1872. As the result of a merger with the Eutaw Street Methodist Church in 1926, the church acquired the flat marble marker from Bishop Francis Asbury's tomb, and placed it on the interior wall of the narthex--a pulpit from which Bishop Asbury had preached at the Eutaw Street church.

Additions to the Mt. Vernon Place United Methodist Church include the Sidney Stanton Bosley Memorial Chapel in 1949, a Connick cross in 1956 and Asbury House in 1957.

Niernsee and Neilson, the Baltimore architectural firm, designed a number of the neighboring structures on Mt. Vernon Place and were the architects for Asbury House. Originally built for Albert Schumacher, a local shipping magnate and President of the Board of Trade, Asbury House has been converted into church offices and group meetings. Built c. 1850, the house was sold in 1893 to George von Lingen, the German consul in Baltimore, who is credited with remodeling the second-floor library. He employed German laborers for the intricate carvings and ceiling painting. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ellet Rieman were the last residents prior to the purchase by the trustees of the Mt. Vernon Place United Methodist Church of the house, named for Bishop Asbury.