Facing Franklin Street in Annapolis, you find a brick Gothic Revival church now home to the Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum, Maryland's official repository of African American history. Housed in the former Mt. Moriah African Methodist Episcopal Church, this 11,700-square-foot facility contains 12,000 historical objects and the Sylvia Gaither Garrison Library and archives. Named for Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, it serves as the state's official repository of African American material culture and presents permanent and temporary history and art exhibits alongside performance space.
Lectures, workshops, performances, and educational programs are offered in person and virtually throughout the year. The brick building you face was constructed in 1875 and remodeled in 1896; it is a two-and-a-half–story, gable-front church executed in the Gothic Revival style. For nearly a century it served as the meeting hall for the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, a congregation originally formed in the 1790s.
Stand here and imagine the congregation and later those caring for its objects, stories, and archives inside these walls. Notice the Gothic gable and the textured brickwork rising above Franklin Street.