Calvary Baptist Church (Manhattan)

Calvary Baptist Church is an Independent Baptist church, located at 123 West 57th Street between the Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) and Seventh Avenue, near Carnegie Hall in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. As of 2022, the church is at a temporary location while its building at 123 West 57th Street is being demolished and replaced. History The church was founded in 1847, and its first sanctuary was at 50 West 23rd Street, completed in 1854. It then moved to a red sandstone Gothic church designed by John Rochester Thomas at its current location, which was built in 1883–1884. It also had a chapel at 223 West 67th Street, which was later used by St. Matthew's Roman Catholic Church. In 1923, Calvary became one of the earliest churches to operate its own radio station and has since maintained a long tradition of widely followed religious broadcasts. "Tell It From Calvary" is a radio show that the church still produces weekly; it is heard on WMCA. The building at 123 West 57th Street was an early example of an urban high-rise, or "skyscraper", church, a 16-story building which also included the Hotel Salisbury, an apartment hotel. Planning for the edifice began in 1929, with the design credited to the firm of Jardine, Hill & Murdock, and the building was dedicated in 1931. Two Steinway grand pianos were donated to the church by pianist Van Cliburn, who attended periodically while living in the hotel. Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton have worshipped at Calvary. Billy Graham and Billy Sunday have preached there. In 2019, Alchemy and ABR Investment Partners announced that they would acquire the sites at 123–141 West 57th Street from the Calvary Baptist Church. The developers planned to replace these sites with a 26-story tower containing a church sanctuary, offices, and shops. In early 2020, Calvary Baptist Church and the Salisbury Hotel closed in preparation for demolition. Following a delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, Alchemy Properties acquired the church in 2021 and announced plans to redevelop the site. Demolition began in 2022, and the next year, the church leased space at a synagogue on 86th Street. Senior pastors 1847-1849 David Bellamy 1850-1852 John Dowling 1852-1863 A. D. Gillette 1864-1869 R. J. W. Buckled 1870-1911 Robert Stuart MacArthur 1915-1917 Joseph W. Kemp 1918-1929 John Roach Straton. During his tenure, Calvary was nationally known as a center for fundamentalism and efforts to reform society in his vision of Bible-based morality. 1930-1934 Will H. Houghton Houghton resigned from Calvary's pulpit to serve as the fourth president of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, IL. 1936-1949 William Ward Ayer A poll found preacher and religious broadcaster Ayer to be Manhattan's "third-most influential citizen", behind Eleanor Roosevelt and religious broadcaster Bishop Fulton Sheen. 1950-1957 John Summerfield Wimbish 1959-1973 Stephen F. Olford Olford "took it as a challenge to seek to overcome prejudice" and the church was desegregated under his leadership. Today, the church "celebrates [the] congregation’s ethnic, racial, social-economic, generational, and cultural diversity within [the] unity in Jesus Christ" as one of its core values, a diversity that "reflects what heaven will look like one day." 1976-1986 Dr. Donald R. Hubbard 1989-1994 James O. Rose Jr. 1997–2018 David Paul Epstein 2022–present Abraham Joseph References External links Official website