Mount Vernon Cultural Walk: First Unitarian Church of Baltimore

Be Here Stories

The Mount Vernon Cultural Walk is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours. Located at 10 West Franklin Street The First Unitarian Church was founded in 1817 as the “First Independent Church of Baltimore.” Its name reflected the views of its congregants, free thinkers with “liberal sentiments” on religion. Within two months they began to build a church. Completed in 1818, it is the oldest purpose-built Unitarian church in North America and a National Historic Landmark. The church is among the world’s finest examples of French Neoclassical architecture. Daring for the time, its design by French émigré Maximilian Godefroy used the basic shapes of the cube, sphere, and triangle with a minimum of detail. A major interior renovation in 1893 added a barrel-vaulted ceiling to improve the sanctuary’s acoustics and a Tiffany mosaic of “The Last Supper,” composed of some 65,000 pieces of favrile glass. At the 1819 ordination of the church’s first minister, Jared Sparks, the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing delivered a landmark sermon that defined the tenets of Unitarianism in the United States, emphasizing freedom, reason, and tolerance. Later known as the “Baltimore Sermon,” it led to the formation of the denomination in 1825. Members of the congregation have included artist Rembrandt Peale, George Peabody, Enoch Pratt, pioneering social worker Mary Richmond, and Adelyn Breeskin, first woman director of the Baltimore Museum of Art.