The new owners of Mount Vernon Place Church have selected a nationally prominent architecture firm to help guide its restoration.
Quinn Evans, winner of the American Institute of Architects’ 2024 AIA Architecture Firm Award, has been chosen over 10 other design teams that responded to a Request for Qualifications issued by UNITE Mount Vernon, the non-profit organization that acquired the 1872 landmark in July and is working to restore and activate it as a community hub and anchor for Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood.
Jack Danna, chair of UNITE Mount Vernon, said the firm’s Baltimore office will lead the effort and its charge is to develop a conceptual master plan to guide the church’s restoration and adaptive reuse. He said Quinn Evans’ team will be led by principal Anath Ranon; senior associate Allison McElheny and associate Sara Langmead. Ranon is a past member of Baltimore’s preservation commission and Langmead is a current member.
Danna said UNITE’s selection committee short-listed four firms and concluded that the Quinn Evans team offered “the most holistic, pragmatic approach” to preserving the historic church while introducing uses that would make it economically viable. He also noted its previous work with preservation and adaptive reuse of historic structures and said the team suggested creative and architecturally-sensitive ways to make the building more accessible to people with disabilities.
The commission represents a vote of confidence in the historic church at 2 E. Mount Vernon Place. Not many churches in North America have been targeted for major overhauls in recent years. One of the last major restorations of a Baltimore church involved the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the first Roman Catholic cathedral built in the United States after the nation’s founding, in 2003 to 2006 and then after it suffered earthquake damage in 2011. Lovely Lane United Methodist Church at 2200 St. Paul St. has been restored and upgraded in phases between 1980 and the present.
Mount Vernon Place Church was designed by Thomas Dixon and Charles Carson and is part of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon historic district, which means any changes to its exterior must be approved by Baltimore’s preservation commission.
Considered a prime example of Victorian Gothic architecture, the church has three spires and an exterior made of six different types of stone. In addition to a sanctuary that seats 900, it has numerous other gathering spaces, from the intimate Bosley Chapel to a cavernous upper-level space known as Davis Hall, as well as a massive M. P. Moeller organ that has 3,927 pipes and a central rose window modeled after the one at Notre-Dame Cathedral of Paris. Its cost, including land, building and furnishings, was $400,000 in 1872.
The seller was the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. UNITE acquired the building from the conference after a contract of sale with New Jersey developer Joseph Novoseller fell through.
The contract fell through because Novoseller died while on a trip to Israel and no one else from his company, Aria Legacy Group of Lakewood, was in a legal position to complete the transaction. Novoseller, Aria’s managing principal, never said exactly what he planned to do with the church. A small Methodist congregation continues to lease space for worship services behind the main sanctuary and UNITE has pledged to work with its members throughout the renovation period.
The scope of renovations will be determined in part by what Quinn Evans recommends, and the estimated cost has been put at anywhere from $5 million to $10 million or more. UNITE has launched a fundraising effort and already has more than $300,000 to start planning and make immediate repairs and improvements.
Thought leaders
Founded in 1984 by Michael Quinn and David Evans, Quinn Evans is a national firm that’s known for its work in restoration and adaptive reuse. Its projects include a multi-phase renovation of architect Gyo Obata’s 1976 National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C., and restoration of a Detroit landmark, Michigan Central Station, for the Ford Motor Company. Based in Washington, it also has offices in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Mich.; Richmond, Va. and Madison, Wisconsin, in addition to its office at One Charles Center in Baltimore.
The American Institute of Architects announced in December of 2023 that Quinn Evans would receive the 2024 AIA Architecture Firm Award, the highest honor that the AIA can bestow on an architecture firm. In its announcement, the AIA cited Quinn Evans’ commitment to sustainable design, adaptive reuse and social empowerment.
“As a long standing and prominent member of the preservation community, Quinn Evans understands the puzzle of preservation as few others do,” said Elizabeth McClure Hallas, 2023 chair of the AIA Historic Resources Committee Advisory Group, in a letter nominating Quinn Evans for the Architecture Firm Award.
“They embrace complexity through a collaborative spirit, integrated design, and innovation to consistently deliver excellence. Their role as thought leaders and advocates ripples across the profession with broad impacts and positive change on the built environment, communities and the profession…They lead the way as a firm that holds design excellence and sustainable stewardship in equal measure.”
“Quinn Evans has a four-decade-long history of redefining preservation as it has restored hundreds of the country’s cherished buildings and sites,” the AIA said in a statement. “While this firm’s deep commitment to this important aspect of the profession is unrivaled, it continues to transform the discipline to address our most pressing modern challenges: climate change and social inequity. Quinn Evans was among the first firms to demonstrate that sustainable design can and must be incorporated into existing and historic buildings, and it continues to advance preservation as a method of social empowerment.”
Pioneering projects
Quinn Evans gained a Baltimore office in 2017, when it acquired a highly respected local firm, Cho Benn Holback + Associates. The Baltimore office initially practiced as Cho Benn Holback, a Quinn Evans Co., but eventually came to be known as Quinn Evans.
Cho Benn Holback was well known for a number of pioneering restoration and adaptive reuse projects for developer C. William Struever and others, including Tindeco Wharf; Canton Cove; Brown’s Arcade; the Baltimore School for the Arts; the Jim Rouse Center at the American Visionary Art Museum; Clipper Mill; the Humanim Building at the American Brewery; Everyman Theatre on Fayette Street and the Open Works maker space on Greenmount Avenue. That large portfolio of preservation projects set it apart and made it attractive to Quinn Evans.
The office started in 1975 as Cho, Wilks and Associates. It then became Cho, Wilks and Burns and Cho, Wilks and Benn before changing to Cho Benn Holback + Associates. Principals have included Diane Cho, David Benn, George Holback, Barbara Wilks and Richard Burns. Cho Benn Holback alumni who are now Quinn Evans principals include Rima Namek and Joe Cellucci. Other alumni include Diane Rohrer; Jillian Storms; Klaus Philipsen, Tim Duke, Mike Watkins and many others.
One of Quinn Evans’ recent projects in Baltimore is a $30 million, 94-unit apartment development at 400 Park Ave. that incorporates part of the shell of the old Martick’s Restaurant Francaise at 214 W. Mulberry St. Other recent Quinn Evans projects in Maryland are the Ruth R. Marder Center for Matisse Studies, the Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings and Photographs and the Joseph Education Center at the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Center for Architecture and Design at 100 N. Charles St.; the restoration of Kenneth Murchison’s 1911 Baltimore Penn Station in midtown; Creative Alliance’s Creativity Center in East Baltimore; and the Packing House in Cambridge, Md.
Community engagement
Now that the architects have been hired, Danna said, UNITE plans to begin a community engagement effort in 2026 to get ideas from the public about how the church can best be repurposed. Over the past month, the church has been used as a pop-up holiday bookshop and the setting for a series of concerts, one of which drew more than 300 people last week.
One question that the architects will help answer is whether the owners should preserve the original wooden pews in the main sanctuary. According to historians, the pews were carved over a seven-year period by one craftsman, and no two are alike. They came in handy during the Dec. 18 concert, but UNITE’s board may want to remove them to make the sanctuary a more flexible, multi-purpose space. The estimated timetable for finishing all of the work is four to six years, but board members say some phases of the restoration can be completed much sooner than that.
I was impressed with the Quinn Evans resume until I came to the part about the 94 unit building that surrounds the old Marticks. Yikes.(cue needle scratching over a record)