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Tabernacle Church
The Tabernacle Church

Kendall Baptist (former Tabernacle) Church
The Kendall Baptist (former Tabernacle) Church


Tabernacle Church (4)

9th Street and B Street, SW (202 9th Street)
Constructed in 1881-82, demolished in 1959

The Tabernacle Church was an independent congregation founded by members of the Ryland Methodist Chapel in Southwest Washington who were dissatisfied with the pastor assigned to them by the bishop.

The location chosen by new Tabernacle congegration for its new church was just opposite the National Museum building on B Street (now Independence Avenue), designed by Cluss and Schulze in 1879-81. Three months after the new museum opened, the Tabernacle congregation hired Cluss and Schulze to adapt the style of the National Museum for their church. Like the National Museum, the red brick, one-story church included corner towers, and its front facade contained three large arched windows and multicolored brick patterns. The interior was an amphitheater-style auditorium church, focusing attention on the pulpit. Cluss and Schulze also used this plan for the later built Universalist Church of Our Father.

The Tabernacle congregation did not long occupy this building. In 1894, the Tabernacle Church was purchased by Calvary Baptist Church (for which Cluss had also designed a church building) for its mission church known as Kendall Chapel. Kendall became an independent congregation in 1901.

When Cluss' church was demolished in 1959 as part of Southwest Urban Renewal Plan, the congregation moved to Hillcrest Heights, Maryland.

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