1842/1914 - First Baptist Church - Altoona, Pennsylvania - Dated Buildings and Cornerstones on Waymarking.com

One of the oldest churches of Altoona, the First Baptist Church sits on the corner of 17th Street and 12th Avenue. A white brick construction the front entrance has for large columns that support the roof over the stairs and porch.

"The year 1842 marked the beginning of the Baptist Witness in Altoona. The First Church was located in Pleasant Valley and was known as the Regular Baptist Church of Pleasant Valley. A group of twenty-one members forming the church came from the Logan's Valley and Hollidaysburg Churches. They met in a small log school house in the Valley, at Collinsville. Subsequently the church moved to the Union School House, built in 1838 and located at Union Avenue and Sixteenth Street. It was used also by the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist and United Brethren congregations in the early years of their histories. In 1853, one year before Altoona became a borough, the church moved into a small one-story brick building on Virginia Avenue (now Eleventh Avenue) near Clara Street (now Fifteenth Street). Its first imposing church structure was erected on that corner in 1871. It was remodeled after a fire in 1908, and was totally destroyed by fire in 1912. The present church building at 1201-07 Seventeenth Street, one of the most attractive church buildings in central Pennsylvania, was dedicated in 1916. The church has had twenty-two pastors in its one hundred and two years of existence, and its present membership is 1,459. Upon its former site, at Eleventh Avenue and Fifteenth Street, the Chamber of Commerce Building now stands."

http://files.usgwarchives.net/pa/blair/church/protestantchurchhist.txt

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