Court Street Baptist Church

K-164

The Kehukee Association, composed of Baptist churches in southeastern Virginia and eastern North Carolina, established Court Street Baptist Church on 7 Sept. 1789. This is the oldest Baptist church in Portsmouth and Norfolk and became the mother church of several other congregations. Members acquired land here in 1799 and built their first sanctuary. African American members, about a third of the congregation in 1860, withdrew in 1865 and formed two new congregations. Reuben H. Hunt, one of the South's most prominent architects early in the 20th century, designed the church’s present Romanesque Revival sanctuary, which was completed in 1903.

Department of Historic Resources, 2019

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Minutes of the Virginia Portsmouth Baptist Association. Lemuel Burkitt and Jesse Read, A Concise History of the Kehukee Baptist Association (Halifax, NC: A. Hodge, 1803). Centennial of Court Street Baptist Church (Philadelphia: The Jas. B. Rogers Printing Company, 1890). William Lumpkin, A History of Court Street Baptist Church (Lawrenceville, VA: Edmonds Printing Company, 1989). N.E. Adamson, History of Court Street Baptist Church (Portsmouth, VA: Printcraft Press, 1939). The Virginia Baptist Register, No. 50 (Richmond: Virginia Baptist Historical Society, 2011). Robert B. Semple, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia (Richmond, 1810). William Lumpkin, A History of Portsmouth Baptist Association, 1791-1991 (Lawrenceville, VA: Edmonds Printing Company, 1991). Kimberly Gay, “Romanesque Immersion With Reuben Hunt’s Baptist Churches in Hampton Roads” (Thesis, Old Dominion University, 2013).