The price of Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church has dropped to $600,000, after the city landmark went back on the market following the death of contract purchaser Joseph Novoseller.
PraiseBuildings, a Maryland-based real estate brokerage that specializes in the sale of religious properties, held an open house on Sunday to promote the sale of the building at 2 East Mount Vernon Place, one of the most-photographed structures in the state.
Dozens of people toured the main sanctuary and adjacent rooms during the two-hour open house, including prospective buyers, neighbors and others just looking to visit a 150-year-old landmark that’s usually off-limits to the public.
“OFFERED FOR SALE AT $600,000,” stated a sales flyer available at the front door. “The offering price has been significantly reduced – from $1.35 million to $600,000 – to incentivize the purchaser to grant a no-cost long-term lease, providing worship and office space to the existing congregation of +/- 25.”
In addition to the reduced price, “owner financing may be available to a religious buyer who intends to use the church as a worship facility,” the flyer stated.
The 3,927-pipe M. P. Moeller organ was a big draw during the open house. Photo by Ed Gunts.
The seller is the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, based in Fulton, Maryland. The conference negotiated a contract about five years ago to sell both the church and the adjacent church office building at 10 E. Mount Vernon Place, a mansion known as Asbury House, to Novoseller, managing principal of Aria Legacy Group in Lakewood,New Jersey. Novoseller reportedly offered to pay $1 million for both properties, at a time when some individual townhouses in Mount Vernon were selling for more than that, but died before completing the transaction.
As long as they are owned by a religious institution, the properties are exempt from property taxes. According to state land records, Asbury House has an assessed value of $761,500 for the year that began July 1 — $208,000 for the land and $553,500 for the building.
Historic designation
Completed in 1872, the church is part of Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Historic District, and any changes to its exterior must be approved by the city’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation. Both the church and Asbury House are also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The zoning is OR-2, which allows residential and office use as well as churches.
Conceived of as a “Cathedral of Methodism,” the church was designed by Thomas Dixon and Charles L. Carson and is considered a prime example of Victorian Gothic architecture. It has three spires and an exterior made of six different types of stone, including a green-toned fieldstone called serpentine metabasalt, with buff and red standstone trim. Its cost, including land, building and furnishings, was $400,000 in 1872.
The church’s rose window is modeled after one at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Photo by Ed Gunts.
The church stands on the site where Charles Howard, son of Revolutionary War officer John Eager Howard, had a mansion, and Francis Scott Key, author of The Star-Spangled Banner, died in 1843. The sanctuary seats 900. The rose window is modeled after the one in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Named after Francis Asbury, the first American Methodist bishop, Asbury House was constructed around 1855 for Albert Schumacher, a shipping magnate. At the time, it was one of the most impressive houses in Baltimore, with a brownstone exterior, mosaic interior finishes, octagonal parlors and a domed skylight above an unusual “hanging spiral staircase” that rose three floors.
The house was sold in 1893 to George von Lingen, the German consul in Baltimore. He is credited with bringing in German craftsmen to create a second-floor library with intricate carvings, built-in bookcases and a large painting on the ceiling. The property was acquired by the church in 1957 to house its offices.
Mired in court proceedings
Before settling on the property, Novoseller sought permission from the Baltimore’s Planning Department to subdivide the church from Asbury House, so he could sell the house separately. Novoseller never gave a clear idea what he planned to do with the church, except to say that he envisioned allowing the Methodist congregation to continue meeting there and adding other uses, possibly arts-related.
The ladies’ restroom in the Mount Vernon Place church has a furnished lounge area. Photo by Ed Gunts.
The plan was controversial because Asbury House contained spaces used by the church congregation, such as restrooms and offices, and preservationists feared the church wouldn’t be usable or easy to renovate without it. Under Novoseller’s subdivision plan, most of the off-street parking spaces previously used by the church were assigned to Asbury House, leaving the church with one off-street parking space.
In October of 2020, the Planning Department voted 5 to 2 with one abstentionto approve the subdivision, but the Mount Vernon Belvedere Association (MVBA) appealed the decision in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. That was the start of a three-year period in which the case was mired in court proceedings.
In August of 2021, Circuit Court Judge Jeannie Hong held a hearing and sided with the community, reversing the commission’s decision and sending the issue back to the commission for another hearing. Her decision meant that Novoseller didn’t have city approval to subdivide the church from Asbury House so he could sell the two parcels separately.
The commission held another public hearing in October of 2021 but took no new testimony from the public and essentially affirmed its previous decision to grant the developer’s request for a subdivision. At that meeting, the panel approved a statement outlining the “findings of fact and conclusions of law” that led to its earlier approval of the subdivision.
Bosley Chapel is named for a minister’s son who was killed in a train accident. Photo by Ed Gunts.
The MVBA again appealed the commission’s action but Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Geller rejected its appeal in November of 2022, clearing the way for the sale to Novoseller. The MVBA then filed an appeal with the Appellate Court of Maryland, which sided with Novoseller in the late summer of 2023. But earlier this year, Novoseller died while on a trip to Israel. Before his death, Novoseller had offered to sell his contract to the community association if its members wanted to buy it, but a sale never took place and the conference retained ownership of the two buildings.
Sale terms have changed
This summer the conference enlisted PraiseBuildings to find another buyer, but the terms of the sale have changed. Even though the subdivision went through, the brokerage is selling only the church building at present, and Asbury House was not open for inspection on Sunday. According to PraiseBuildings senior vice president Barb Bindon, Asbury House likely will go on the market after the church is sold.
The church has an active congregation that currently worships in the Mount Vernon Room, on the same level as the main sanctuary. The church wasn’t open for in-person services during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the congregation continued to worship via Zoom. It has held hybrid services, meeting both in-person and virtually, since the spring of 2023.
The congregation has had three different pastors since the church was first listed for sale in 2019 and members welcomed their latest pastor, Angelic Williams, this month. Williams also serves as pastor of St. Luke United Methodist Church at 1100 N. Gilmore St. in Sandtown-Winchester. Bindon said the conference is asking any purchaser to provide a 49-year lease that would give the Mount Vernon congregation space where it can continue meeting in the church, but not necessarily in the main sanctuary.
Davis Hall, a multi-purpose room on an upper level of the church, is larger the many contemporary worship spaces. Photo by Ed Gunts.
Visitors on Sunday were invited to walk all around the building, from its mechanical room in the basement to a large space called Davis Hall that’s above the Mount Vernon Room. Other spaces include Bosley Chapel, named in memory of a minister’s son who was killed by a train as a young boy, a kitchen and several multi-purpose rooms. Many of the visitors paused to study the stained glass windows and take photos from the balcony, with its massive M. P. Moeller organ, which has a total of 3,927 pipes.
Part of the basement level includes a day care facility for about 40 children, including a kitchen accessible from East Branch Lane. Operators have given the conference and parents notice that the child care facility will close at the end of August, and it wasn’t part of the open house on Sunday.