Mother AME Zion Church, 1925.

Designed by one of the first African American architects in the United States, George W. Foster Jr., Mother Zion was completed in 1925, as the sixth and final home of the religious community. The congregation that moved into this new Gothic Revival building dates to 1796 when it was founded as the first African American church in New York. The community became the "mother" church of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Conference denomination when the church broke from the predominantly white Methodist Episcopal Church in 1820. During the 1930s the charismatic preacher of the this church was Reverend Dr. Benjamin C. Robeson, who spoke passionately of civil rights activism. Parishioners, both here and in its previous locations, included singer Paul Robeson (brother to the pastor) Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Marian Anderson, and Madam C.J. Walker.