Grace & St. Peter's Church

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The first true brownstone building in Baltimore, today’s Grace & St. Peter’s Church opened its doors in 1852 as Grace Church on Park Avenue in Mount Vernon. Architecturally, it was the first church built of stone in the city and with stained glass and floor tiles imported from England, the majestic interior of this Gothic Episcopal church, designed by architect J. Crawford Neilson, harkens directly back to its Anglican origins.

In 1912, Grace Church combined with St. Peter’s, then on the edge of today’s Bolton Hill neighborhood, merging high-church and low-church traditions in a single congregation. By the 1920s, what once was a place of worship mainly for prominent Baltimore families, including the nearby Garrett family of B&O Railroad fortune, had begun to change. The church at that time created a church school for Chinese immigrants who worshiped alongside many African American families who had moved to the neighborhood.

Today, the church embraces both Anglican and Western Catholic traditions and its Park Avenue complex includes a magnificent rectory and houses the Wilkes School for children per-kindergarten through fifth grade. Please