First Baptist Church, Protestant church at Broadway and West 79th Street, Manhattan, United States.
First Baptist Church sits at the corner of Broadway and West 79th Street with a distinctive brick exterior marked by Hebrew and Greek inscriptions. The building's angled position relative to the surrounding street grid gives it a prominent presence along the avenue.
The congregation was founded in 1762 and initially gathered in a private home on Gold Street before relocating to the Broadway location in 1890. This corner building has served the community for more than a century in its current setting.
The establishment of the Abyssinian Baptist Church resulted from early nineteenth-century disagreements regarding the treatment of African American congregants at First Baptist Church.
The building sits directly on Broadway and is easily accessible from the sidewalk where the subway station is nearby. Visitors should understand this is an active place of worship where respect for ongoing services and events is important.
The Greek and Hebrew inscriptions on the exterior walls are unusual examples of multilingual religious messages on historic church buildings in the city. These texts reflect the congregation's theological connections to biblical traditions and scholarship.
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