Reformed Episcopal Church of the Rock of Ages, 1210 West Lanvale Street, Baltimore, Independent City, MD

Significance: One of the youngest congregations on the Square, Emmanuel Christian Community Church dates to 1934, the year the congregation moved into its present home here at the intersection of West Lanvale Street and North Carrollton Avenue. Designed by Charles E. Cassell and built in 1878 for Baltimore's first Reformed Episcopal congregation, this church is by far the most unconventionally Gothic revival church on Lafayette Square and remarkably different from other Baltimore area Episcopal churches from the same period. Although the church incorporates many of the stock architectural elements of a Gothic revival building, it lacks the central entrance porch and the hallmark steeple so prominent in Gothic revival churches and so critical to the identification of the church on the skyline. As built, the church more closely resembles both an English parish church and a tithe barn, two English Gothic building types of a modesty and simplicity that were in keeping with Reformed Episcopal sentiment of the late nineteenth century.

Looks can be deceiving, however, for the church as it stands today represents but a fraction of Cassell's original design concept.
Survey number: HABS MD-1142
Building/structure dates: 1878 Initial Construction