This beautifully detailed Romanesque Revival structure was designed in 1893 by the architects Fowler and Hough, whose other Romanesque Revival work includes the 23rd Regiment Armory on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.

The First Hungarian Baptist Church was a community space even before it was a church. The building at 255 East 80th Street was originally home to an Industrial School for the American Female Guardian Society, an organization founded in 1849 to assist working women by offering necessities like food and clothing, as well as vocational and educational training.

When the New York City Baptist Mission Society purchased the building in 1918, with the vision to spread Christianity throughout the city, it focused on the Hungarian immigrant population in the area. That year, First Hungarian Baptist Church opened on the building’s first floor, and accommodations for the pastor were made on the second floor.

At the time, many of the Hungarian immigrants in Yorkville were young working women. In an effort to provide safe lodging for those women, and a link to the community for those who had come to the United States alone, the Baptist Mission Society transformed the Industrial School’s third-floor classrooms into bedrooms for girls and created the Hungarian Girls Club.

In 1957, the ownership of the building was transferred to the First Hungarian Baptist Church, which retains ownership of the building today. The community spirit still survives at First Hungarian Baptist, where services and events are still offered in Hungarian.