The First Baptist Church is a historic

church building A church, church building, church house, or chapel is a building used for Christian worship services and Christian activities. The earliest identified Christian church is a house church founded between 233 AD and 256 AD. ''Church'' is also ...

Muskogee, Oklahoma Muskogee () is the 13th-largest city in Oklahoma and is the county seat of Muskogee County, Oklahoma, Muskogee County. Home to Bacone College, it lies approximately southeast of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Tulsa. The population of the city was 36,878 as of ...

. The church was built in 1903 and was the first church building for the

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

population of Muskogee County. It was built in a

Romanesque Revival Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended t ...

style. It features two asymmetrical, crenelated towers and a steeply pitched gabled roof. The building is clad in two types of red brick. The two types of brick are separated by a rusticated limestone

belt course A belt course, also called a string course or sill course, is a continuous row or layer of stones or brick set in a wall. Set in line with window sills, it helps to make the horizontal line of the sills visually more prominent. Set between the ...

. The building was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1984 for architectural significance and for its importance in local African-American history. First Baptist "evolved from a mission school founded in 1877 for blacks and Indians". It is one of four churches included in the Black Protestant Churches of Muskogee Theme Resource study. Muskogee had a "thriving" black community with a business district of "several retail stores, physicians and attorneys offices, a black-owned bank, and a black newspaper, the ''Muskogee Cimeter''." The population included 7,831 blacks in 1910 (31% of the total Muskogee population).

References

Oklahoma State Historical Preservation Office entry

External links

Official page
Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Oklahoma Buildings and structures in Muskogee, Oklahoma National Register of Historic Places in Muskogee County, Oklahoma {{Oklahoma-Baptist-church-stub