It was first chartered in 1848 as
Rose Hill Baptist Sunday School and Church, on
East 30th Street between
Third and
Lexington Avenues in
Manhattan,
New York City. Rose Hill was a
house church with twelve members. In 1849, Rose Hill Baptist became the
Lexington Avenue Baptist Church with twenty-eight members at 154 Lexington Avenue and 30th Street in a new
Lombardian Romanesque-style edifice, which is now the First Moravian Church. In 1903 the Ordination of
Harry Emerson Fosdick – the most prominent liberal Baptist minister of the early 20th Century and author of the hymn "God of Grace and God of Glory" – was held at MABC. Fosdick was later the minister of the Park Avenue Baptist Church, today's Central Presbyterian Church at 593
Park Avenue, and then of
Riverside Church. In 1930 the parish leased its property to be developed into the Roger Williams Hotel at 131 Madison Avenue, designed by
Jardine, Hill & Murdock and named for the Baptist founder of
Rhode Island, with the church sanctuary to be included in the 15-story building. New stained glass was added depicting the writers of the Gospel and their symbols: Matthew/Cherub, Mark/Lion, Luke/Ox, and John/Eagle. The church's parish house, built in 1906, was located around the corner at 30 East 31st Street between Madison Avenue and Park Avenue South. In the early 1980s, MABC began the Sunday Afternoon Meal for Seniors (free meals for the midtown elderly) and also a Shelter for the Homeless, and in 1992 the church began ministries to persons with AIDS at
Bellevue Hospital sponsored by the Bellevue Chaplains' Office. ==Theology==