Sold for $500,000, Leased Back for $100 a Year: Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Place Church Finds a New Owner

• The Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church sold the 153-year-old Mount Vernon Place church for $500,000.
• The buyer is UNITE Mount Vernon Inc., a nonprofit formed by local preservation and community leaders.
• The congregation stays under a 50-year lease at $100 a year, including utilities.
• Restoration is estimated at $8 million to $10 million or more over four to six years.

A landmark Baltimore church has been sold to a local nonprofit, and its congregation is staying. Baltimore Fishbowl, in a report by Ed Gunts, said Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church at 2 E. Mount Vernon Place changed hands for $500,000 on July 10, 2025.

The seller was the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. The buyer is UNITE Mount Vernon Inc., a nonprofit whose leaders include Jack Danna of the Central Baltimore Partnership, preservationist Elizabeth Bonner, architect Ann Powell and Henry Holt Hopkins of the Mount Vernon Place Conservancy. The Methodist congregation will remain under a 50-year lease at $100 a year, including utilities, using the Mount Vernon Room, a Sunday school room, Bosley Chapel and shared spaces. The neighbouring Asbury House, an 1855 mansion that housed church offices, was sold the same day to Asbury House LLC.

The 153-year-old church seats 900 and has three spires, an exterior of six kinds of stone and a rose window patterned on Notre Dame. It cost $400,000 to build in 1872, including land and furnishings. Restoration is estimated at $8 million to $10 million or more over four to six years, starting with about $1 million of stabilisation work on the roof, mechanical systems and critical repairs. Early funding includes a $250,000 state bond, $50,000 from the Goldseker Foundation and $10,000 from the Mount Vernon Belvedere Association.

Possible new uses include retail, performance space and arts programming, and a partnership with the Peabody Institute is being explored; subdividing the building for housing is not envisioned. Danna said the state money was highly flexible and could be used for soft costs and stabilisation, and Bonner said the group also wants to preserve the history of those who built the church.

The Baltimore deal separates ownership of a costly building from the congregation that worships in it. The denomination sheds a large repair bill, a nonprofit takes on the restoration and fundraising, and the congregation keeps a home at a nominal rent. Jamaican denominations with historic town churches that small congregations can no longer maintain could explore similar arrangements with heritage trusts or community groups, keeping worship in place while others raise money for repairs and new uses.

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