A buyer has emerged for historic Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, one year after a previous sale fell through

Buyers have emerged for Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church and the adjacent church office building known as Asbury House.

Congregation members were told this month that the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, which owns the two buildings and listed the church for sale last year, has contracts to sell both the church at 2 E. Mount Vernon Place and Asbury House at 10 E. Mount Vernon Place. Settlements are expected to take place in July.

The sales are coming more than a year after a previous contract fell through. The new church buyer is UNITE Mount Vernon Inc., a recently-formed entity that was registered with the state of Maryland in January 2025. The address of its resident agent is 700 Washington Place in Mount Vernon.

The contract buyer of Asbury House is a separate but related entity that will close at the same time as the church settlement. Sale prices have not been disclosed.

The buyer of the church has not met with the congregation or disclosed specific plans for the building. The names of its members have not been made public. Congregation members have been told only that it’s a group from the community that wants to preserve the historic church and restore it for uses that are compatible with the building, will bring it back to life and will make it an asset to the surrounding Mount Vernon historic district. The buyer also stepped forward, congregants have been told, to prevent the church from standing dormant, and to prevent inappropriate development from happening at that key corner of Mount Vernon Place.

Described as one of the most photographed buildings in Baltimore, Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church was designed by Thomas Dixon and Charles Carson and completed in 1872. Its main sanctuary has seating for 900 people and a rose window modeled after the one at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It has numerous other gathering spaces, from an intimate worship setting called Bosley Chapel to a cavernous multi-purpose room known as Davis Hall. Its massive M. P. Moeller organ has 3,927 pipes.

There have been projections that a complete church restoration could cost millions of dollars and most likely would require a fundraising effort. But preservationists also have noted that the work could be completed in phases and some now-inactive parts of the building could be ready to occupy fairly quickly. There is talk of a former basement-level child care center reopening within the next month.

As part of the sale, UNITE Mount Vernon has offered the existing Methodist congregation a long-term lease that permits members to continue worshipping in part of the church while the new owner renovates and restores the rest of the property for other uses. The buyer of Asbury House is known to the members of UNITE Mount Vernon and would work in tandem with that group to renovate its property, but none of the space in Asbury House is included in the lease offered to the church congregation.

Multi-year saga

If it moves ahead, the sale would mark the end of a multi-year saga in which the Conference has attempted to sell the church without displacing the congregation that meets there. It is a particular victory for Wanda Duckett, who is retiring this month as Superintendent of the Conference’s Baltimore Metropolitan District and has made it her goal to find a steward that will respect the history and legacy of the landmark church, a fixture on Mount Vernon Place for more than 150 years.  

It is also a reprieve for the small congregation, whose members have continued to meet in the church building even though the main sanctuary has been ruled off limits due to concerns about roof leaks, falling plaster and other structural and deferred maintenance issues.

Many people in the city have assumed that the church is closed, because of news reports that the building was for sale, but the congregation never disbanded. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, members went to virtual meetings, as many congregations did. After the state-imposed lockdowns ended, they met in the second-floor library of Asbury House for more than a year. Most recently they have been meeting in the Mount Vernon Room behind the main sanctuary. The church also has a hybrid option that allows members to attend services via Zoom.

The congregation owned the two buildings until seven years ago, when members voted to transfer ownership to the United Methodist Conference because they didn’t have the financial resources to maintain them. Under the new lease, they will be tenants of UNITE Mount Vernon, and they will not have to pay for utilities, maintenance or even snow shoveling at the church. The arrangement, worked out by the conference and the buyer, frees them from the burden of worrying about the building’s upkeep while ensuring that they have a place to meet.

“I’m very pleased,” said the church’s pastor, Angelic Williams. “It provides us with the opportunity to do the work that God has challenged us to do. It relieves us from the cloud of uncertainty” of wondering whether the congregation will have a home.

“It is a win for the community and a win for the congregation,” said Jack Danna, president of the Mount Vernon Belvedere Association (MVBA). “It’s hugely important.”

$100 a year for 50 years

The Conference and its broker, FaithBuildings, listed the church after the sudden death of a previous contract buyer, developer Joseph Novoseller, managing principal of Aria Legacy Group of Lakewood, New Jersey. PraiseBuildings specializes in the sale of church properties. The seller offered the church with two prices: $1.35 million if the congregation wouldn’t be permitted to stay in the building, and $600,000 if the buyer would give the congregation a 49-year lease that allowed members to remain.

According to a sales flyer prepared by FaithBuildings, the lower price was set “to incentivize the purchaser to grant a no-cost long-term lease, providing worship and office space to the existing congregation.” In addition to the lower price, “owner financing may be available to a religious buyer who intends to use the church as a worship facility,” the flyer stated.

UNITE Mount Vernon opted to let the congregation remain in return for the lower price. It offered a lease that allows the congregation to occupy a portion of the space in the church for 50 years, at a rate of $100 a year, and doesn’t require the congregation to pay for heat, electricity or water.  

The congregation’s lease primarily gives it access to the Mount Vernon Room and a smaller Sunday school room near it. Both spaces are on the same level as the main sanctuary, with an entrance off Charles Street. The lease also permits access to shared spaces in the building, including rest rooms, hallways and a kitchen. It does not include any provisions for off-street parking.

This week, two representatives of the congregation signed the lease negotiated by the conference and UNITE Mount Vernon. The lease-signing was one of the last steps needed for the buyer and seller to move ahead with settlement. The lease had not been signed by representatives of the conference or the buyer when the congregation members signed it. It also was not dated, but congregation members were told it will take effect as soon as the sale is final.

Steeped in history

The buildings that are changing hands were constructed by different owners, later joined as one parcel and then legally subdivided.

The church was built on the spot where Charles Howard, son of Revolutionary War officer John Eager Howard, had a mansion, and Francis Scott Key, author of The Star-Spangled Banner, died in 1843. Considered a prime example of Victorian Gothic architecture, it has three spires and an exterior made of six different types of stone. Its cost, including land, building and furnishings, was $400,000 in 1872.

Named after Francis Asbury, the first American Methodist bishop, Asbury House was constructed around 1855 for Albert Schumacher, a shipping magnate. At the time, it was one of the most impressive houses in Baltimore, with a brownstone exterior, mosaic interior finishes, octagonal parlors and a domed skylight above an unusual “hanging spiral staircase.”

The house was sold in 1893 to George von Lingen, the German consul in Baltimore. He is credited with bringing in German craftsmen to create a second-floor library with intricate carvings, built-in bookcases and a large painting on the ceiling. The church acquired the residence in 1957 to house its offices, and the properties at 2 and 10 E. Mount Vernon Place were combined to create one legal parcel in state land records. Doorways were created to lead from one building to the other.

Subdivision plan

In 2020, the Methodist Conference negotiated a contract to sell the buildings to Novoseller, a developer who wanted to subdivide the church from Asbury House so he could sell the house separately. Even before he settled on the properties, Novoseller was advertising to sell Asbury House for about the same amount that his contract called for him to pay the Conference for both properties.  

Novoseller was initially somewhat more forthcoming about his plans than UNITE Mount Vernon has been so far, because he had to be. He needed permission from the city’s Planning Commission to subdivide the two buildings before he could flip Asbury House, and that required him to meet with the community and participate in a public hearing to answer questions about his development plans.

Conducted virtually in October of 2020, the public hearing drew more than 50 people who voiced concerns and sent letters and email messages in opposition to his plans. Novoseller was never entirely clear about what he wanted to do with the church, except to say that he envisioned allowing the congregation to continue meeting there and adding other uses, possibly arts-related. He said he didn’t think restoring the church would be as expensive as some warned, and he said he thought it could be upgraded successfully even if Asbury House was sold off.

The plan was controversial because Asbury House contained spaces used by the church congregation, such as restrooms, offices and a formal dining room, and preservationists feared the church wouldn’t be as easy to renovate without it. Under Novoseller’s subdivision plan, most of the off-street parking spaces previously used by the church were assigned to Asbury House.

The planning commission approved the subdivision despite the strong community opposition, with chair Sean Davis admitting he didn’t bother to read many of the emails in opposition to Novoseller’s plan. The MVBA, the local community association, appealed the planning commission’s decision in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. That was the start of a three-year period in which the case was mired in court proceedings and the sale to Novoseller was held up.

In the summer of 2023, after the MVBA spent thousands of dollars on attorneys and court fees and the case was remanded to the planning commission once, the Appellate Court of Maryland ruled that the city panel acted properly and the subdivision was recorded in the state’s land records. But in early 2024, Novoseller died while on a trip to Israel without completing the sale, leaving the Conference still owning the two buildings. If the MVBA hadn’t held up the sale with its legal challenges, it likely would have gone through.

The Conference put the church on the market in the summer of 2024, this time without Asbury House as part of the listing. PraiseBuildings held a well-attended Open House last July that allowed prospective buyers to tour the church and learn about the price options.

Old Bibles and sermons

There had been no word about the church sale for months until the recent reports about a prospective buyer and a new lease for the congregation. Earlier this month, some congregation members met to clean up Asbury House and remove certain church-related items in preparation for the sale, including old Bibles, a record made by the church choir and a complete set of one former minister’s sermons. Last Sunday, at the end of the service, Pastor Williams gave each congregation member a plate bearing an image of the church.

On Wednesday, congregation members voted unanimously to accept the terms of the $100-a-year lease, saying it’s a generous offer and they’re grateful to Duckett, Williams and the Conference for standing by them and protecting their interests. They say they’re eager to learn more about the buyer’s plans and how they can work together to make the new arrangement a success for all. After the lease was signed, they walked to a nearby restaurant with the pastor to have dinner and talk about the church’s future.