The First Baptist Church is an historic
American Baptist church located at 164 South Cherry Street in
Poughkeepsie
Poughkeepsie ( ) is a city within the Town of Poughkeepsie, New York. It is the county seat of Dutchess County, with a 2020 census population of 31,577. Poughkeepsie is in the Hudson River Valley region, midway between the core of the New ...
,
Dutchess County, New York
Dutchess County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 295,911. The county seat is the city of Poughkeepsie. The county was created in 1683, one of New York's first twelve counties, and later o ...
. It was built between 1875 and 1877, and consists of a rectangular main church section, front entry pavilion, and tall rectangular
bell tower
A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell to ...
. The brick building features
Gothic arched openings and stone tracery.
[ ''Note:'' This includes ]
It was added to 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 2001.
The architectural design of the Baptist Church erected on the former site of the Temperance Hall on Mill Street was placed in the hands of the committee by Mr. James Strang Post, Architect, in July 1874. The edifice built has a frontage of seventy feet and a depth of one hundred and sixty feet; tower one hundred and eighty feet in height. The materials used are pressed brick, with Ohio and blue stone trimmings. The seating capacity was estimated to be about one thousand. The whole cost in 1874 was to be in the neighborhood of $55,000. The work commenced 1 August 1874.
The Corner Stone ceremony was reported in the Poughkeepsie Eagle News 11 Aug 1875, page 3. Many documents and articles of the time were deposited in the Corner Stone and listed in the newspaper article. The Corner Stone is made of brown stone and cut in relief on its outside was the year 1875. Inside the Corner Stone included the name of the architect James Strang Post, the many church officials, those present at the ceremony as well as an Honor Roll of those persons donating $1 or more to the building project fund. The church was organized in 1800. Its first church building was built in 1808 and removed in 1874 to prepare for the new structure in 1875. A larger house of worship was utilized in 1839 in Lafayette Place. The building of the 1875 structure allowed the two smaller houses of worship a facility large enough for all to attend.
[Poughkeepsie Eagle-News
Poughkeepsie, New York
11 Aug 1875, Wed • Page 3]
See also
References
External links
Official site
Baptist churches in New York (state)
Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state)
Gothic Revival church buildings in New York (state)
Churches completed in 1875
19th-century Baptist churches in the United States
National Register of Historic Places in Poughkeepsie, New York
Churches in Poughkeepsie, New York
{{NewYork-Baptist-church-stub