Abyssinian Baptist Church ca. 1923

Abyssinian Baptist Church was located on West 40th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues when Adam Clayton Powell Sr., arrived from New Haven to take up the pastorship of what was the largest black congregation in the world in 1908. Powell, who moved his family to a house in a predominantly white neighborhood on West 134th Street, soon tried to interest his congregation in relocating the church to Harlem but encountered considerable resistance. Abyssinian did not purchase land on West 138th Street between Seventh and Lenox Avenues until 1920. A white architectural firm designed the Gothic edifice, completed in 1923, which still features stained-glass images of blue-eyed blond angels, saints, and biblical figures.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who succeeded his father as pastor in 1937, used the substantial power base afforded by the largest black congregation in America to win election as the first black member of New York's City Council and as Harlem's Congressman for twenty-five years.