Leadenhall Street Baptist Church

Leadenhall Street Baptist Church is a historic Baptist church located at Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is a gable-front rectangular brick temple with simple Renaissance Revival detail. The original exterior wall surfaces have been covered with formstone on the main façade and stucco elsewhere. It features round-arched stained glass windows on each side bay. It was built in 1873, by Joseph Thomas & Son for the city's African American Baptists who were then centered in the old southwest area from the downtown business district of Baltimore in the "Sharp-Leadenhall" (named for the intersecting nearby streets) community in the old "South Baltimore" area. Nearby is its now famed revitalized "Inner Harbor" area of the old "Basin" for the harbor port.The neighborhood is just west of the Federal Hill community and commercial district connected by West Hamburg Street, which is along South Charles and Light Streets, and the famous hill itself, which was the site of a celebratory picnic in 1788 after a parade of the various guilds, organizations and military units of old "Baltimore Town" to commemorate the ratification by Maryland of the new Federal Constitution, and later fortified with earthen embankments and large cannons of artillery by Northern troops of the Union Army a month after, during the Civil War to keep a close watch on and control on the Southern-sympathizing citizens of the City who had erupted in April 1861, in a riot attacking passing Massachusetts and Pennsylvania troops from the President Street Station on the east side from Philadelphia and the North, on their way to the nearby (a few blocks away with the Washington tracks running right by the Church) Camden Street Station of the famous Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to defend the National Capital of Washington from the newly seceded Virginians and Confederates.