{"nrhp_refnum":"95000911","name":"Mount Zion Baptist Church","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"328 W. Whitney Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Albany","county":"Dougherty County","state":"GA","lat":31.571986809000066,"lon":-84.15557091599999,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1995-08-10","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Black","Social History","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national","state","local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A one-story red-brick Baptist church built in 1906 at the corner of West Whitney Avenue and Jefferson Street in Albany, Dougherty County, Georgia, with Late Gothic Revival and Romanesque Revival detailing. It was built by church members.","why_significant":"It is an intact early 20th-century brick church typical of urban African-American churches. It housed Albany's first African-American Baptist congregation, organized in 1866. It was also a primary meeting place of the Albany Movement, a civil rights effort of the early 1960s, and hosted its first mass meeting on November 25, 1961.","narrative":"Mount Zion Baptist Church is a red-brick church completed in 1906 at West Whitney Avenue and Jefferson Street in Albany, Georgia. Church members built it with Late Gothic Revival and Romanesque Revival detailing, including two square towers of unequal height, eight-sided metal spires, arched windows and a pressed-metal roof. Inside, the sanctuary keeps its wood floors, pressed-metal cove ceiling and a baptismal pool concealed beneath the pulpit. The congregation was organized in 1866 and was the first African-American Baptist church within Albany's original city limits. In the early 1960s the building became a main gathering place for the Albany Movement. Its first public mass meeting took place here on November 25, 1961, and the SNCC Freedom Singers performed for the first time at that meeting. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph David Abernathy and John Lewis spoke to crowds that spilled into the street. Worship ended in 1972, and plans call for a Civil Rights museum.","period_of_significance":"1906 - 1963","architect_builder":"Built by church members; no architect named (form lists n/a)","architectural_style":"Late Victorian: Late Gothic Revival/Romanesque Revival","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Worship use ended in 1972 when the congregation moved to a new building; current function listed as work in progress, with plans to rehabilitate it as a Civil Rights museum.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:43.171777-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_GA/95000911.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/95000911/47a29d62cc-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/95000911/47a29d62cc-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Betty Rehberg","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Mt._Zion_Church_on_Whitney_Betty_Rehberg_2.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Betty Rehberg</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Mt._Zion_Church_on_Whitney_Betty_Rehberg_2.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/93207862","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q134297312"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/georgia/dougherty-county/mount-zion-baptist-church-95000911/"}