1871
A Prayer Group Begins
The congregation traces its roots to a prayer meeting first held in February 1871 at Schoonmakers Hall, 893 Flatbush Avenue. The earliest gathering numbered eighteen adults and twenty-nine children.
For more than a century and a half, a single congregation has prayed, grown, grieved, and rebuilt on the same Brooklyn ground.
It began with a prayer. In February of 1871, a small group gathered in Schoonmakers Hall on Flatbush Avenue — eighteen adults and twenty-nine children seeking a place to worship together. The following spring they organized formally as a Baptist church and purchased a lot on Nostrand Avenue, raising their first frame building that same year.
What follows is the story those founders set in motion: a story carried through generations of newcomers, tested by fire, and renewed by a community determined to keep its doors open. The photographs below — restored from the church's own archive — mark the buildings that have housed this faith along the way.
The congregation traces its roots to a prayer meeting first held in February 1871 at Schoonmakers Hall, 893 Flatbush Avenue. The earliest gathering numbered eighteen adults and twenty-nine children.
In the spring of 1872 the fellowship was formally constituted as the Lenox Road Baptist Church. A lot was purchased at Nostrand Avenue, and a wooden church was built the same year — the first home of its own.
As the congregation grew, it built a permanent sanctuary — the stone-and-brick landmark pictured here, a fixture of the neighborhood for generations.
A dedicated Sunday School building was added to serve a growing community of families and to anchor the church's ministry to its youngest members.
Beginning in the early 1960s, the surrounding neighborhood changed profoundly. Families arriving from the American South and from across the Caribbean — Panama, Guyana, Costa Rica, the British Virgin Islands and beyond — joined the church and reshaped it.
As more African American and Caribbean members took their place in the life of the congregation, the church leaned into a more socially engaged ministry, becoming widely regarded as a beacon in the community.
On December 23, 1975, fire destroyed the 103-year-old building. The loss was devastating — but it did not end the congregation's story.
Reflecting its transformed congregation, the church called its first Black pastor — a turning point that affirmed the community the church had become.
A century after the first sanctuary rose, the congregation dedicated a new home on Nostrand Avenue — the brick sanctuary that stands today, proof of a community that rebuilt rather than scattered.
Rev. Dr. Kirkpatrick Cohall became senior pastor, leading a ministry built around food security, children's and health education, the arts, and youth mentoring.
On October 2, 2022, the church marked 150 years with an anniversary gala — a celebration of faith, music, and service, and of every generation that kept the doors open.
From a prayer meeting of forty-seven souls to a century-and-a-half of worship and service, Lenox Road Baptist Church remains a living congregation — rooted in its history, devoted to its neighborhood, and looking forward.
We invite you to be part of the next chapter.
