First African Baptist Church, 23 Montgomery Street, Savannah

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS GA,26-SAV,33-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

The First African Baptist Church is located at 23 Montgomery Street in Savannah, Chatham County, Georgia. Situated on the west side of Montgomery Street on the northwest trust lot of Franklin Ward, the building is flanked by late century commercial buildings. The church building occupies the entire width of the lot leaving only enough space for a sidewalk to run its perimeter. The coordinates for the church are N, W.

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS GA,26-SAV,33-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

First African Baptist Church was built to be a safe-haven for African-Americans to be free to worship beginning in a time even when they were not free themselves. It played an integral role in the establishment, progression, and reinforcement of religious freedom for African Americans in the southern United States. This building was built during a time when most African Americans lived in shanties on the outside of town in deplorable conditions. First African Baptist was the first brick building owned by African Americans in the city of Savannah and was built on the edge of town serving as a symbol of the African American civilization and movement into the city. The church was built in the high style of Romanesque Revival for what was at the time an unlikely group of patrons.

First African continued to be vital to the African American community in the century, particularly during the Civil Rights era. Savannah was a center for racial injustice before and during the Civil Rights Movement just as it had been a center for the horrors of the era of slavery a century prior. First African has been standing and strengthening its black members through the atrocities they ve faced for many generations. Description: Completed in in the Greek and Romanesque Revival styles, the church building is two stories tall on a raised basement with a gray-beige textured stucco finish covering a masonry structure. It measures approximately 110 feet deep at its longest point and about 60 feet wide at its widest.

The building faces east and is situated on .17 acres surrounded on all four sides by sidewalks and city streets. The rectangular plan is constructed of Savannah gray brick laid four bricks deep combined with post and beam structure for the floors, roof, and interior galleries. Access to the raised basement is gained from one entrance each on the north, south, and east facades via stone stairs leading downward. The main fa ade has a centrally located tower and belfry flanked by a set of double doors on each side. The long sides of the building are dominated by six tall, narrow, stained glass windows that stretch from the floor of the main level into the second story gallery.

Characteristics of the Greek Revival style in the design of this building include: pediment, bulls eye window on the belfry, dentils and frieze along the roof edge. Elements of the Early Romanesque Revival style are seen in the rounded Roman arches used throughout the exterior and interior. FIRST AFRICAN BAPTIST CHURCH HABS No. GA-276 (Page 3) The east elevation is the building s main fa ade and is approximately 60 feet wide and is divided into three even bays. The center bay is made up of a four- story tall belfry that protrudes six feet from the face of the building to form a portico over the center wooden double doors. The other two bays each have a set of wooden double doors topped with a decorative bracketed cornice and a pair of smaller stained glass windows.

These doors are accessed by two sets of stone stairs that run parallel with the face of the building starting at street level at each corner and come up to form a six-foot-deep landing between the two doors about seven feet above sidewalk level and is lined with a cast iron balustrade. The raised basement level has a smooth, tan colored stucco finish that covers the brick structure and the texture on the main is more pronounced. The exterior wall of the east fa ade rises up to meet the roofline at a one-foot wide, white frieze that runs horizontally the entire perimeter of the building. The gabled end roof has a low pitch and forms a wide pediment lined with a cornice that mimics the trim of the frieze.

The current trim in place is covering dentils that ran the perimeter of the building at the roofline when it was constructed and can be seen in earlier photographs before the stucco was applied. The belfry rises to a height of more than 60 feet and is topped with a hexagonal spire clad in what appears to be slate tile shingles. The roof has an end gable design and the roofing material looks to be rolled roofing with a white, rubberized coating applied. The north elevation of the church measures about 90 feet and is six evenly spaced bays wide. Each bay contains a five by fifteen-foot-tall, stained glass window each topped with a wide stone lentil and surrounded by a Roman arch brick trim.

The raised basement level has simple one-over-one sash windows centered in each bay directly below and the same width as the stained-glass windows on the main level. The west elevation is the backside of the church and at the ground level, is littered with the building s mechanics and two asymmetrical, haphazard additions. The center bay is dominated by a hexagonally shaped vertical bump- out with two tall, narrow, arched-top stained glass windows at the main level height. The south elevation carries the same building details as the north elevation. Upon entering the church at the east elevation doors, visitors step into a vestibule the width of the building with a curved staircase at each end that gives access to the second level gallery.

Through the vestibule doors, the ceiling opens up to the main chapel area divided by two aisles and is filled with curved oak pews that center around the raised, hexagonally shaped pulpit. The pulpit is framed by pilasters, entablature, and a pediment in a classic Greek temple design. The second level gallery is about ten feet deep and runs along the back wall of the space and most of the way down the sides towards the pulpit. The ceiling is made of tin in a nine-patch quilt pattern and the floor is made of pine planks. FIRST AFRICAN BAPTIST CHURCH HABS No. GA-276 (Page 4) Access to the raised basement is gained via an elevator in the vestibule or exterior doors on the north and south facades and this area is used for offices and smaller church functions.

The ceiling is about nine feet high in this space and is a mismatch of different tin tiles and trim. History: In the early George Leile, a slave, was driven by his spirituality and permitted by his master to preach to slaves at their plantation in South Carolina. In Leile was converted and received into the church with the assistance of his master and began preaching at plantations along the Savannah River. He often came down river to Brampton Plantation and Savannah to preach and this is where he met Andrew Bryan and his wife Hannah, both slaves. In Leile returned to the plantation and baptized Bryan and his wife along with a few others. In Bryan began preaching at Brampton and along the Savannah River and six years later, was ordained a minister.

The next day, on January 20, (in Brampton s barn), a white minister from Columbia County, Georgia baptized 45 of Bryan s followers, constituted them a church, and ordained Bryan as their minister. A few years later, Bryan began a regular ministry in Savannah but continued to hold services at Brampton. Bryan was given a lot in North Oglethorpe ward where he built the first church home of First Colored Baptist Church, but the congregation quickly outgrew the space. In Bryan purchased lot #7 Middle Oglethorpe Ward for 30 pounds sterling and built a larger building to hold services.

Around that same time, Newington Baptist (a white congregation), was organized on another site in Savannah, and a few years later, another small congregation of white Baptists organized a few blocks away in a wooden building on Franklin Square as Savannah Baptist. In these three Baptist churches met and organized the Sunbury Association where Bryan held firm in having fellow slaves ordained as Baptist ministers to lead new black Baptist churches. Second Baptist was constituted in the middle of the city whose patrons were wealthy white residents and their upper level domestic servants who were often permitted to hire out their time for personal financial gain. In First Colored Baptist Church on Bryan Street had a schism that separated the church into two entities.

Over followers went with Reverend Andrew Marshall, the second pastor of First Colored Baptist, while only 155 stayed with Deacon Adam Johnson. At this time, Marshall s groups became known as First African Baptist and Johnson s group as Third African Baptist. Luckily for Marshall s group, Savannah Baptist had just finished their new building on Chippewa Square and had left the wooden structure on Franklin Square empty and for sale. Marshall s group purchased the building using money they had earned while working at night as permitted by their masters, and these funds were quite often their freedom funds they had been saving to buy their own or their family s freedom. The congregation worshipped in the wooden building until when they had raised enough funds to pay to have a new church built.

The old church was torn down and construction began on the new larger, brick building and would continue for the next four years. The Savannah gray bricks were formed by hand at night on the banks of the Savannah River by church members after they had FIRST AFRICAN BAPTIST CHURCH HABS No. GA-276 (Page 5) worked a full day for their masters. The building cost more than to build, all of which was paid off before the end of the year it was completed. In (post Emancipation Proclamation) the Sunbury Association was dissolved since white Baptists refused to see their black counterparts as equals and would no longer meet to discuss social or religious matters.

Shortly after this dissolution, the all black Zion Baptist Association was formed on nearby Hilton Head Island to further the religious freedom of newly freed blacks and quickly made its way to Savannah s black churches. As time went on, First African Baptist grew stronger in faith, freedom, and patronage. In the a 125 foot Italianate steeple was added to the front fa ade and housed a pound bell. By the congregation had outgrown its home again so a 27-foot extension was added to the rear of the church along with a larger pulpit adorned with stained glass window memorials of its founding members. That same year, a second story gallery was added complete with a era pipe organ and a vestibule for access to the new area.

In a hurricane destroyed the oversized tower, but the bell was able to be salvaged. It wasn t rebuilt until when it was done so at a smaller scale and completed with the original salvaged bell. The building was given a stucco coating in the but otherwise has remained in its state to the present day.

Source document Quoted word for word from HABS GA,26-SAV,33-. Not written, edited or summarised by this site.

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