The Hanson Baptist Church at the corner of Hanson Place and South Portland Avenue, 1940. Built between 1857 and 1860, the stately brick and stucco structure has been the home to a Seventh Day Adventist congregation since 1963. Nearly a century earlier in 1864, the occasional minister of the then-Baptist church, Robert Lowry, composed the hymn “Hanson Place,” referencing the church. It was later featured in the Western films of director John Ford.

In 1844, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle printed the following prediction “THE CITY OF CHURCHES — such, in time, will be the distinctive appellation of Brooklyn.” In the ensuing decades, the incorporation of new houses of worship matched the pace of residential development and reflected the diverse ancestry of the immigrant communities who settled there. The buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries express the evolution of American church architecture, as dictated by the pride and prosperity of worshippers from Bushwick to Bay Ridge.

Hanson Place Seventh Day Adventist Church ARCHITECT: Unknown DATE: c. 1857-1860 STYLE: Italianate This building was originally erected as the Hanson Place Baptist Church, an outgrowth of the Atlantic Street Baptist Church, but has been owned by the Seventh-Day Adventists since 1963. Constructed of brick above a brownstone base and trimmed with wood, this Italianate church gives distinction that still retains of much of its nineteenth-century atmosphere.

The 19th century saw Fort Greene develop from farmland held by a few families to a residential neighborhood, populated by a mix of Brooklyn’s working, merchant, and upper classes. Today, much of the neighborhood has been well preserved, including several blocks of brownstone and rowhouse architecture, churches, parkland, and civic institutions dating to the 19th century. Even in areas transformed by postwar urban renewal and commercial development traces of an earlier era remain.

A collection of churches across New York City from the New York Public Library.