Photo by NCinDC.

I am always interested in the history of buildings, so I will be writing (hopefully every weekend) a feature about the history of different buildings with in the D.C. area.

Up this weekend is the Metropolitan AME Church, located on M Street between 15th and 16th streets downtown.The church hosted Frederick Douglass’s and Rosa Park’s funeral, had President Taft, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Bishop Desmond Tutu as speakers, and held pre-inaugural prayer services for President Clinton.

Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal church in 1816, the first independent black denomination in the US. Free and enslaved African Americans formed the AME church as the national cathedral of African Methodism in 1821.The church, done in a Gothic-style brick, was completed in 1886 and funded entirely from donations.

Metropolitan AME has been at the center of the abolition of slavery, and later, the civil rights movement. It founded and housed the Bethel Literary and Historical Association from 1881 to 1915, a influential literary society that preserved the history of African Americans.

The church features 29 stained glass windows, each detailing the church’s growth during its 124 year history.

Unfortunately, the future of this church is in question. The National Trust for Historic Preservation put the church on its 2010 list of the 11 most endangered historic places in the nation.

The church is surrounded by buildings that have recently been under construction, causing the church to suffer serious structural cracks. On top of that, ongoing water infiltration caused more damage. While the congregants and other concerned folk have donated money to restore the building, the church needs millions of dollars worth of repair to make it safe.