[Map]

		B1 INDEX
		City Museum
		7th and I Sts NW
		Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
		Greater New Hope Baptist Church
		819-821 7th St
		Goethe-Institut Washington
		7th and H Sts.
		Calvary Baptist Church

	CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH

Calvary Baptist Church, at 8th and H Streets, N.W., was completed in 1866 by the German-born immigrant architect Adolf Cluss, who was born in Heilbronn in 1825 in today's Baden-Württemberg. His partner on the design and construction was another immigrant, Joseph Wildrich von Kammerhueber, with whom Cluss worked for a number of years on architectural and construction projects. Calvary is the only surviving church building designed by Adolf Cluss; others by him included buildings for Foundry Methodist Church (1864-66), St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Church (1866), Tabernacle Congregational Church (1881-82), Universalist Church of our Father (1882), and the Chapel for St. Augustine's Roman Catholic Church (1886).

Founded in 1862 by a group of prominent Baptists who took the Union side during the Civil War, the building's tall spire--seen here in an early photograph by Mathew Brady --was a landmark in the downtown area for many decades until a major storm on July 30, 1914 so weakened the spire that it was removed. The Church is currently undergoing significant renovations and its famous steeple was restored to the neighborhood skyline in February 2005.

In fact, the building that we see today is quite different from the first building erected by Cluss and Kammerhueber. The original building was dedicated on June 3, 1866, but a fire gutted the still-new building during a blizzard in December 1867. One of the causes was a faulty heating system--possibly a failed innovation by Adolf Cluss! The reconstruction--using most of the original plans, but with an improved furnace--started almost immediately; the current building was occupied in the winter of 1868 and dedicated in July 1869.

The interior has also been extensively changed and some imagination is required to imagine Cluss's original design. Major changes include the addition of balconies on the north and south sides of the sanctuary (breaking up the tall stained-glass windows) and the placement of a very large and impressive set of organ pipes at the front of the sanctuary, thereby completely obscuring a small rose window on the western wall. The organ had originally been placed on a rear balcony/choir-loft at the eastern end of the sanctuary; a rose window is still a major visible feature at this end of the church, which faces on 8th Street.

Calvary Church has always been and remains a socially active congregation in the downtown area and now offers special services to Washington's Burmese-speaking community as well as outreach programs for the hungry and homeless. With the many current renovations and reconstruction, Washington's downtown can look forward to this landmark church's presence for many generations to come.

For more information about Calvary Church's long history, see "At Calvary: A History of the First 125 Years of Calvary Baptist Church, Washington, DC 1862-1987, With Glimpses of the Years 1988-94" by Carl W. Tiller and Olive M. Tiller (Manassas, VA: Trinity Rivers Publishing, 1994).

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

 Cluss Biography
Adolf Cluss (1825-1905), born in Heilbronn, Germany, the son and grandson of architects, had a remarkably successful career in Washington, DC. He came to the United States in the wake of the unsuccessful 1848 revolution and was a follower of Karl Marx, whose works he sometimes translated for the New York Tribune (the newspaper for which Carl Schurz, another "forty-eighter," served as a Washington reporter).

Cluss's buildings dot Washington still today and his prominence in the German-speaking as well as the greater Washington communities is unquestioned.