Harmony Street Baptist Church, 527 Forty-Second Place North, Birmingham, Jefferson County, AL

Significance: The building's architect, Wallace A. Rayfield, was a notably successful African American architect in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries. After earning a B.S. degree in classics in 1896 from Howard University (Washington, DC), he obtained a certificate in architecture from Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY) in 1898 and graduated in 1899 from Columbia University (New York, NY). He received his bachelor of architecture degree from Columbia in 1900. He also attended the Polytechnic Institute in London, England. From 1899 to 1907 he taught at Tuskegee Institute as a faculty member in the first architectural program at an African American college. He practiced architecture in Birmingham 1908-1929. Due to its large seating capacity and supportive pastor, Thirty Second Street Church frequently hosted the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) during the nationally significant Civil Rights movement in Birmingham during the 1950s and 1960s.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N787
Survey number: HABS AL-986
Building/structure dates: 1924 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1949 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1962 Subsequent Work