| Lovely Lane United Methodist Church | |
| Location: | 2200 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, Maryland |
| Coordinates: | 39.3144°N -76.6158°W |
| Architect: | Stanford White |
| Architecture: | Romanesque |
| Added: | May 25, 1973 |
| Refnum: | 73002189 |
| Designated Other1: | BCL |
| Designated Other1 Abbr: | BCL |
| Designated Other1 Date: | 1971 |
Lovely Lane United Methodist Church (formerly known as First Methodist Episcopal Church and Lovely Lane Chapel) is a historic United Methodist church at 2200 St. Paul Street in the Charles Village neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, United States.
The building was designed by renowned New York City architect Stanford White in the Romanesque Revival style and completed in 1884 as the "Centennial Monument of American Methodism". It is patterned after the early churches and basilicas in Ravenna, Italy. The exterior is constructed of a gray ashlar granite with limited ornamentation. It features a square bell tower patterned after the campanile of the 12th century church of Santa Maria, Abbey of Pomposa, near Ravenna. The pulpit is a reproduction of the one at St. Apollinaris, in Ravenna.
Locally influential architect Charles L. Carson was supervising architect for the McKim, Mead & White firm during construction of the church.[1] Lovely Lane Methodist Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The congregation is known as the "Mother Church of American Methodism."[2] The original Lovely Lane Chapel or Meeting House was the scene of the December 1784 "Christmas Conference", at which the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States was founded and Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke were ordained as its first bishops.
The plain original chapel on Lovely Lane, off German (now Redwood) Street, between South Calvert Street and South Street in the city's waterfront district, was abandoned in 1786 and demolished. It was replaced (first) by an elaborate beaux-arts structure of the Merchants Club, and now the building contains a restaurant as well as offices and teaching space used by Chesapeake Shakespeare Company.