Philadelphia Tabernacle
1801 Spring Garden Street
There has been a church at the northwest corner of Spring Garden and 18th Streets since 1863. It is the oldest non-residential building in the Baldwin Park neighborhood and is a contributing building in the Spring Garden Historic District on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.
The history of the site of the church is quickly told, as the church building was constructed on bare land and has been minimally changed since 1863:
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part of Coaquannock, the "grove of tall pines" settled by the Lenni Lenape;
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acquired by William Penn in 1682 and made part of his Springettsbury estate;
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sectioned off to Andrew Hamilton by Hannah Callowhill Penn as payment for legal services and becoming the back yard of the Bush Hill Manor;
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finally, one of the larger parcels subdivided when the Bush Hill estate was split up in 1813.
The current structures along Spring Garden Street on either side of the church have been discussed elsewhere on our website. The Hoopes mansion across 18th Street is discussed here and the Carpenters Union building to the church's west here. The NxNW Apartments across Spring Garden Street to the south is discussed here and the Community College of Philadelphia is here.
Portion of an 1810 map showing the future location of the Fifth Baptist Church at the blue dot, northwest of the Bush Hill Mansion that faced Fairview Street (now Buttonwood) but backed up to what would become Morris Street (now Spring Garden Street). Bush Hill was still a large estate and the dotted lines along the streets north of Callowhill Street represent planned streets that had not yet been developed.
The First Baptist Church was founded in Philadelphia in 1698 by members who had previously worshipped at the Pennepek Baptist Church, which was founded in 1688. Over the next one hundred years First Baptist moved around in Philadelphia in different buildings at varied sites. From 1782 to 1803 the pastor of First Baptist was Thomas Ustick. If that name sounds familiar, it is because architect Thomas Ustick Walter was named for him, as Walter's parents were members of the First Church. The most recent church of the First Baptist was built in 1900 at 17th and Sansom Streets and still exists, although it was sold to Liberti Church in 2014.
In 1811 a contingent of 91 members seceded from the First Baptist Church and organized under Rev. William Staughton. They built a circular church 90 feet in diameter on the south side of Sansom Street between 8th and 9th Streets, with John Mills as architect, and called themselves the Sansom Street Church. Staughton served as pastor until 1823. When he left to head what is now George Washington University the attendance fell and the building was sold to John Welsh for $3,500 plus liens of $9,000 and reorganized as the Fifth Baptist Church.
Theology tangent:
Until recently most church histories were stories of schisms and branching, mother churches spawning daughter churches directly or by waving goodbye to congregants with unacceptable theological opinions. The story of the church at 18th and Spring Garden includes both these chapters. Since the Fifth Baptist Church was at 18th and Spring Garden the longest, from 1863 to 1962, let's answer the question: what makes a Baptist a Baptist?
Like our well-known Philadelphia Quakers, the Baptist movement started in the early 1600s in England as a group of Separatists looked to reform Christianity. Like Quakers, the Baptists advocated for religious liberty and separation of church and state. Like most Protestant groups, Baptists believe in the divinity of Christ, salvation through faith, and the authority of the Scriptures. Distinctive Baptist beliefs include:
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rejection of infant baptism and insistence on adult baptism only for believers who are old enough to make their own confession of faith;
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baptism by full-body immersion;
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recognition of the Bible as the final authority on beliefs and practices;
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local church governance;
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no priestly class, i.e. every Baptist has direct access to God through prayer.
Beloved pastor at the Sansom Street Church
The Fifth Baptist Church is on the left edge of this image circa 1848. The annotation in the lower right marks the view as the SE Corner of George (now Sansom) and Ninth Street.
A photo from 1858 of the Fifth Baptist Church looking southeast over the foundation of the Continental Hotel under construction at Ninth and Chestnut. All these buildings are now gone. The Continental Hotel was where president-elect Abraham Lincoln gave a speech on February 21, 1861, commemorated by a plaque on the replacement hotel, the Benjamin Franklin Hotel, which opened in 1925 and is now the Franklin Residences. Two names with neighborhood ties are involved with the Ben Franklin Hotel: Horace Trumbauer was the architect in 1925 and the Korman Corporation took it residential in 2011. Photo from here.
A lithograph of the Baptist Church circa 1850 from here. A baptism is about to take place with a crowd that suggests a bigger church is in order.
Portion of an 1862 City atlas showing the round Fifth Baptist Church (the Sansom Street Church) just west of the circus and east of the round bazaar building at the southeast corner of 9th and Sansom Streets.
The church grew in popularity necessitating a move to the current building at the northwest corner of 18th and Spring Garden Streets. It was designed in the Gothic style by architect Alfred Biles and opened for worship on February 7, 1863.
Portion of 1860 map showing the mostly empty blocks along Spring Garden Street. The Fifth Baptist Church is under construction cattycorner to the oil cloth manufactory that occupied the former Bush Hill mansion, as discussed here.
Ivy-covered Fifth Baptist Church as sketched in 1868. The source for the sketch is the 1881 Baptist Encyclopedia here.
1876 sketch with more contrast from the Official Guide to Philadelphia here.
Portion of an 1875 map showing Spring Garden Street almost completely filled in except for the Barton Hoopes properties along the 1700 block. Gray hatchings represent a building. An X marks a stable. Barton Hoopes (not "Hoopers") will keep one lot for himself directly across from the church as described here. His former mansion is now the Montessori School. The property at the northeast corner of 17th and Spring Garden Streets still remains as city property and is the site of the Masterman School. A map of today would look very much the same as this map.
Description of remodel from the Philadelphia Times of October 27, 1884.
First photo of the church circa 1908, with the pastor in inset. Pastor William Quay Rosselle replaced B. L. Whitman in 1908, so I am not sure which pastor is in the photo. Photo credit here.
1924 announcement of the alterations to be done by busy starchitect Horace Trumbauer. From the Philadelphia Real Estate and Builders' Guide here. Around this same year Horace Trumbauer and his lead assistant Julian Abele were also designing the Parkway Central Library (completed 1927) and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1928).
Excerpt from a listing of Historic Religious Properties in Philadelphia prepared by the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia here. The original architect in 1863 was Alfred Biles and the 1884 sanctuary remodel was done by architect Isaac Pursell. Julian Abele was born in 1881. The confusion probably arises from the 1924 alterations announcement.
Portion of a 1929 Sanborn insurance map showing the built-out block.
Blue represents masonry; pink is brick; and wood is yellow. D represents residences. The church is Gothic style with random-coursed ashlar brownstone with Gothic arched windows and brownstone buttresses. In 1914 architect Paul Monaghan designed the granite chapel with its Gothic arched windows and tracery windows.
The church was called the Brandywine Fifth Baptist Church in part to distinguish it from the Sansom Street Baptist Church building.
The Highway Mission Tabernacle congregation took over the building in 1955. This congregation was founded in 1894 as described in their archives here, and went through a few decades of changes in governance, affiliations, and locations. The original association was called The Cross and Crown, because the group eschewed both symbols. After celebrity evangelist Aimee McPherson visited Philadelphia in 1920, interest in pentecostalism increased as did church attendance. The Highway Mission Tabernacle Union Un-denominational Church of Pennsylvania bought the former Presbyterian church at 19th and Green Street in 1926, just outside our neighborhood in a beautiful structure that still functions as a church. They paid off the mortgage by 1943. Growth continued and in 1960 the congregation bought the Fifth Baptist Church building at the northwest corner of 18th and Spring Garden Streets for $90,000. The Fifth Baptist Church filed for dissolution in 1962, while the Highway Tabernacle did some renovations in their new digs, expanded the original chapel with a granite addition, and set about community outreach via programs like the Spring Garden Academy, a preK-8 ministry. In 1984 the church name was shortened to the Highway Tabernacle Church. In 2008 a sister church was planted at 17th and Tioga and the Highway Tabernacle would move there completely in 20xx and is now known as the Resurrection Life Church.
There is a five-minute video here about Resurrection Life Chucrch.
The strong feelings about crosses and crowns incorporated into their logo. Photo credit at the Resurrection Life website here.
1986: fire at the Highway Tabernacle Assembly of God Church, as discussed in our article about neighborhood fires here.
The church and the parsonage property at 552 North 18th Street (just across Brandywine Street) were deeded to the Chicago Tabernacle for $1 in March of 2022. At that time the combined properties were assessed at $1.6 million. The townhome had been purchased by the church in 1999 for $35,000 for use as a parsonage. It was sold for $950,000 in July 2022 to a local realtor and sold again 11 months later for $1.8 million, presumably having been renovated. The 5-bedroom, 5-bath, 4,000 square foot townhome is currently for sale for $1.6 million.
The current campus pastors of Philadelphia Tabernacle are the husband and wife team of Josh and Susie LeBlanc. The modifier "campus" is used because the "lead pastors" are the Chicago-based husband and wife team of Al and Chrissy Toledo. And now, a little family and church genealogy starting back in 1966:
There was a church called the Central Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, New York, that was established in 1847. In 1966 pastor Clair D. Hutchins settled down in Brooklyn, giving up his globetrotting evangelism tours, and he renamed the church Brooklyn Gospel Tabernacle. Clair and his wife had six children, one of whom, Carol would follow the path of pastoral care.
Carol Hutchins, Clair's daughter, grew up in the Brooklyn Tabernacle and there met her future husband Jim Cymbala. In 1971 the couple took over the church leadership. Carol founded the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir which has grown to 270 voices and been awarded seven Grammys. Jim as lead pastor built the congregation into a 10,000-member megachurch with a sanctuary holding 3,400 members. Carol and Jim had three children, one of whom, Chrissy, would continue this story.
Al Toledo and Chrissy Cymbala grew up in Brooklyn and met through the church run by Chrissy's parents. In 2002 Al and Chrissy moved to Chicago to found Chicago Tabernacle. In 2022 they decided to open a campus in Philadelphia, sending their daughter Susie and her husband of eleven years Josh LeBlanc to be campus pastors.
