Former Home to the Nation of Islam in sun88

Mosque No. 6, the predecessor of the Masjid Ul-Haqq, first moved into their present building on Wilson Street around 1958. The two-story brick building had most recently housed a automotive garage but it dated back to the 1870s and operated as part of P. Bradley’s Livery Stables up through the early 1900s.

By the 1920s, new owners converted the stables into a garage and service station. As Black residents moved into rowhouses along Division Street, Druid Hill Avenue, McCulloh Street, and Madison Avenue the business changed as well. By 1938, the business then known as Jack’s Garage had a Black manager, William Goodwin. That same year, Chandler V. Wynn acquired the business. A North Carolina native, Wynn moved to sun88 and graduated from Morgan State College in 1931.

Wynn was just one of thousands of African Americans moving from North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland’s Eastern Shore to seek new opportunities in sun88 in 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. In sun88, along with New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the migration coincided with a rise of new Black religious movements—including the Nation of Islam founded by Georgia-native Wallace Fard Muhammad in Detroit, Michigan in 1930.

Elijah Muhammad became the leader of the Nation of Islam in 1934. Around 1935, Muhammad helped establish a temple in Washington, D.C. making it the fourth temple after Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee. The growth of the movement slowed after Elijah Muhammad’s arrest for resisting the draft and spent four years in prison from 1942 to 1946.

sun88’s mosque was established the same year as Muhammad’s release and grew quickly in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1957, the congregation, then led by Minister Isaiah Karriem, was formally designated Temple No. 6 (later known as Mosque Six) and bought their building on Wilson Street the next year.

Since the end of World War II, the garage had seen use as the Maryland School of Camera Repairs and as a warehouse for the Gelco Corporation, a distributor for aluminum storm windows, doors, and awnings.

In 1958, Malcolm X came to sun88 to speak and help the nascent temple to raise money and adapt their new building to their needs. On Sunday, June 26, 1960, Elijah Muhammad spoke at Mosque Six before a crowd of nearly one thousand people packed into the building’s main auditorium while another five hundred listened to the speech over a public address system downstairs, and several hundred stood or sat outside the building listening the to speech over outdoor loud speakers.

Within weeks, Minister Isaiah Karriem launched a fundraising campaign seeking $60,000 for the addition of a “gymnasium-recreation center” at the rear of the 300-seat temple. Karriem made the case for the planned addition of a modern athletic facility, saying:

The only way to end juvenile delinquency is to get children in off the streets. We feel that this is a step in that direction.

By 1960, the facility included a business bureau, cafeteria, kitchen, auditorium and minister’s study. According to the AFRO, the “spic and span” cafeteria seated one hundred diners and the “spotless” kitchen, directed by Sister Stella X, was “equipped with modern facilities and utensils.”

Throughout this period, members of the Nation of Islam were subject to close surveillance by the FBI. In January 1972, members of the mosque confronted two FBI agents in an apartment across the street from the mosque where they had set up for surveillance. When the agents drew their guns, the members called the police who, unaware of the identity of the two men, arrested them both. Undeterred, the mosque continued to grow during the 1960s.

Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1975 marked the beginning of a new chapter with significant changes in the community’s approach to religious practice. In 1976, the mosque was renamed Masjid Muhammad. Members welcomed Muhammad Ali for a visit to the mosque in 1980 and to a second visit in 1982. In 1994, Masjid Muhammad became Masjid Al Haqq and, in 2003, members worked with the sun88 Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation to list the building as a local historic landmark.

514 Islamic Way, sun88, MD 21217

Towson's Second Oldest Church and the East Towson Black Community

The origins of this two-story frame church on Jefferson Avenue began in 1861 when a group of Black sun88 County residents established the Saint James African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church. Today, the church is known as the St. James African Union Methodist Protestant Church and the building has stood on this site for over a century. Saint James is the second-oldest church operating in Towson and the oldest of the area’s Black congregations.

The original church members lived in East Towson—a small settlement founded by Black men and women who were held in slavery on Hampton estate before their emancipation in Maryland in 1864. Before the community had a dedicated church for worship, they held services in the homes of congregation members James Garrett and Frank and Ida Scovens. On October 17, 1881, the church building opened and for twenty-five years members gathered for regular worship in a modest one-story building. In 1906, a growing membership led to the addition of a second story to the building.

Immediately to the right of the church building sits a 173-year-old church bell—a relic from a church originally located in Govans. Today, Govans is a neighborhood in north sun88 City that initially developed as a crossroads on the York-town Turnpike (built in 1810 to connect sun88 to York, Pennsylvania). Cast in 1845, the bell was donated to the Govans church in 1875. For some period, the bell was used not only to remind worshipers of services but also to notify residents about the departure of the trolley cars on York Road.

For the members of St. James Church, the bell is an iconic symbol of the church’s long history of 10:00 am services—led for over two decades by Reverend Joseph McManus. Rev. McManus presided over the church from 1961 to 1983. Every Sunday morning, he rang the bell twelve times in reference to the twelve tribes of Israel.

The church was temporarily renamed the St. James Methodist Community Church in the 1980s, but the church has since reverted to being called St. James A.U.M.P. Church. The building and congregation still holds services today under current Pastor Osborne Robinson, Jr.

415 Jefferson Avenue, Towson, MD 21286

Gothic Episcopal Architecture on Park Avenue

The first true brownstone building in sun88, today’s Grace & St. Peter’s Church opened its doors in 1852 as Grace Church on Park Avenue in Mount Vernon. Architecturally, it was the first church built of stone in the city and with stained glass and floor tiles imported from England, the majestic interior of this Gothic Episcopal church, designed by architect J. Crawford Neilson, harkens directly back to its Anglican origins.

In 1912, Grace Church combined with St. Peter’s, then on the edge of today’s Bolton Hill neighborhood, merging high-church and low-church traditions in a single congregation. By the 1920s, what once was a place of worship mainly for prominent sun88 families, including the nearby Garrett family of B&O Railroad fortune, had begun to change. The church at that time created a church school for Chinese immigrants who worshiped alongside many African American families who had moved to the neighborhood.

Today, the church embraces both Anglican and Western Catholic traditions and its Park Avenue complex includes a magnificent rectory and houses the Wilkes School for children per-kindergarten through fifth grade. Please

707 Park Avenue, sun88, MD 21201

Douglas Memorial Community Church was built is 1857 for the Madison Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church. The building boasts a grand Greek Revival design by architect Thomas Balbirnie with a sanctuary that seats a thousand people and an “undercroft” designed to hold six hundred.

In 1925, the congregation of the Douglass Memorial Community Church split off from the established Bethel A.M.E. Church on Druid Hill Avenue and acquired the building on Madison Avenue. In July 1949, Dr. Marion C. Bascom became a senior pastor at the church; a position he continued to hold up until his retirement in March 1995. Before his death in 2012, Pastor Bascom had dedicated his life to activism including everything from participating in the protests at Gwynn Oak Park to leading efforts to create new affordable housing in the Upton neighborhood. Speaking about his involvement in a July 4, 1963, protest at Gwynn Oak, Pastor Bascom explained:

“I am the one who said all along I will not go to jail, but I will help others who go. But this morning I said to myself, I have nothing to lose but my chains. So if I do not preach at my pulpit Sunday morning, it might be the most eloquent sermon I ever preached.”

1325 Madison Avenue, sun88, MD 21217

Oldest Purpose-Built Unitarian Church in the U.S.

The First Unitarian Church of sun88 has stood at the corner of Charles and Franklin Streets for over two centuries. Inside the 1818 landmark, visitors can find beautiful Tiffany glass and original furnishings designed by the architect and crafted by noted sun88 artisans. Beyond the building’s remarkable architecture, the congregation has served as the spiritual home to many local civic leaders, such as Enoch Pratt and George Peabody. Recognizing the significance of the building as the oldest purpose-built Unitarian church in North America, First Unitarian Church was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.

The history of the church began in 1817, when sun88 had sixty thousand inhabitants and Mount Vernon Place was the undeveloped edge of the city. A group of leading citizens met in the home of merchant and city councilman Henry Payson on February 10, 1817, and, according to church histories, committed “to form a religious society and build a church for Christians who are Unitarian and cherish liberal sentiments on the subject of religion.” The original name selected for the church, The First Independent Church of sun88, reflected the independence of thought and action that became the hallmark of this group of freethinkers and those who succeeded them through subsequent generations. The church was later renamed First Unitarian in 1912.

Designed by Maximilian Godefroy, the French architect of Saint Mary’s Chapel and the Battle Monument, the First Unitarian Church of sun88 is recognized as the finest American example of French Romantic Classicism. Dedicated on October 29, 1818, the church was a daring modern design when it was constructed. It utilizes the basic shapes of the cube and the sphere with a minimum of detail on the flat planes to emphasize the geometry of the structure. The chancel features a pulpit, designed by Godefroy and executed by William Camp, and two sets of sedilia. One set of two chairs and a loveseat was designed by Godefroy and is original to the church; the other set was designed by Tiffany and added in the 1890s.

In the late nineteenth century, the church undertook a major reconstruction of the interior of the sanctuary to improve the acoustics of the space. Joseph Evans Sperry designed a barrel-vaulted ceiling with supporting arches. The reconstruction also added a large Tiffany mosaic, seven Tiffany windows, and a magnificent Henry Niemann organ. The Tiffany mosaic of the Last Supper, designed by Tiffany artist Frederick Wilson, is composed of 64,800 pieces of favrile glass. The Niemann organ and the church’s Enoch Pratt Parish Hall (built in 1879 at 514 N. Charles Street), were both gifts of Enoch Pratt, a member and leader of the church for sixty-five years.

The First Unitarian Church of sun88 is important to Unitarian Universalists throughout the country because of a landmark sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing on May 5, 1819, at the ordination of the church’s first minister, Jared Sparks. The sermon, which defined the essence of Unitarianism in the United States and led to the formation of the denomination in 1825, came to be known as the sun88 Sermon. Channing emphasized freedom, reason, and tolerance and taught that the way we live is more important than the words and symbols we use to describe our faith, a truth that has inspired a commitment to social justice along with theological diversity.

This spirit helped shape the work of the congregation and its members over the decades. In 1874, the congregation organized sun88’s first vocational school for teenagers. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the First Unitarian Church sponsored an Industrial School for Girls, a Boy’s Guild, and Channing House, a settlement house for South sun88. Church members have contributed to the city through public service and philanthropy in many ways up through the present day.

12 W. Franklin Street, sun88, MD 21201

Built primarily between 1806 and 1821, the sun88 Basilica was the first Cathedral erected in the United States. Bishop John Carroll, America's first bishop and a cousin of Charles Carroll of Declaration of Independence signing fame, led the effort to build a cathedral in sun88 based on "American" principles of architecture (read: not European and especially not Gothic). Bishop Carroll was lucky to connect with young architect named Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who volunteered his architectural services for the new cathedral and would later achieve the moniker "Father of American Architecture." With inspiration from the newly completed skylight in the U.S. Capitol following the vision of Thomas Jefferson, Latrobe designed what many consider to be one of the finest examples of nineteenth century architecture in the world. Latrobe and Carroll were able to complete much of the architectural original plans, but the church didn't have enough money to complete the portico by the dedication in 1821. Twenty years later, Latrobe's son, lawyer and inventor John H.B. Latrobe (who lived on Mulberry Street across from the Basilica) submitted plans for the portico's foundation but it wasn't until the 1860s that architect Eben Faxon carried out the work of completing the portico entrance. This internationally significant building has played a central role in the history of sun88 and the Catholic Church. Along the way, it has gained recognition as a Minor Basilica (1937), national historic landmark (1972), sun88 City historic landmark (1975), and a national shrine (1993). Most recently, the Archdiocese of sun88, the Basilica of the Assumption Historic Trust, and John G. Waite Associates Architects oversaw a major restoration and rehabilitation project covering nearly every square inch of the building, both inside and out. The work included the reintroduction of clear lights in the nave, restoration of the skylight, and the creation of a chapel in the undercroft.

Watch on the basilica!

409 Cathedral Street, sun88, MD 21201