A mayor of Baltimore designed it. The people of Baltimore believe it saved lives. And O’s fans can’t get enough of its peanuts.
This important force is the Old Otterbein United Methodist Church beside the Convention Center – Baltimore City’s oldest church in continuous use.
“It’s such a beautiful building and piece of property. I felt very humbled to be appointed here,” said the Rev. Mernie Crane, pastor of Old Otterbein. “The people are on fire for Christ and do a ton of volunteer work, including selling peanuts before Orioles games to [finance] the historical building.”
Until Crane, only men led the Baltimore congregation. The present church was named after its first pastor, the Rev. Philip Otterbein.
In the church’s infancy, German descendents built a log chapel on the property, which in 1771 was considered country land, according to church records.
In 1785, builders used discarded ballast bricks from Inner Harbor ships to construct the present Georgian edifice. The building, designed by the future Baltimore mayor Jacob Small, housed swelling numbers of German worshipers.
Inside the church, over 90 windowpanes flood the church’s baby-blue interior with light, said fourth-generation member, Daniel Fisher.
The congregation treasures its 1869 map of Baltimore. The relic is one of the largest maps from a bird’s eye view ever published in the country, according to Bill Joynes, church historian.
J. Seward Johnson Jr., heir to Johnson & Johnson pharmaceuticals, created a sculpture of a man composing a painting of the church. The statue, currently in the Convention Center’s Otterbein Lobby, originally faced Old Otterbein from Sharp Street.
The church’s crown jewels are its bells, casted in 1789 by the world’s oldest bell foundry, the White Chapel Bell Foundry in London that also casted the Liberty Bell.
The clanging bells warned residents that the British were coming during the War of 1812, said Margaret Isabelle Board Obert, chairman of trustees at Old Otterbein. They ring every day at noon and 6 p.m., andbefore services on Sundays.
At each church gathering, “everyone gets up to hug and greet each other, not just the person beside you, but everyone,” Fisher said.
Congregants come from diverse Baltimore neighborhoods, according to Rev. Crane. “Everyone brings their unique foods and conversations to share at services.”
“When you come here, you understand this is a family,” Obert said. “This is home.”
The Old Otterbein United Methodist Church
112 W. Conway St.
Baltimore
410-795-7620
