Former St. Ann parishioners seek to buy back closed Baltimore church

Former St. Ann parishioners are trying to buy back the closed church at Greenmount Avenue and 22nd Street, arguing that the building still matters as a place of worship, memory and neighborhood stability in Barclay-Greenmount. The former Baltimore parish, now on the market for $850,000, sits at 2201 Greenmount Ave. and represents far more than a vacant structure: it is a potential redevelopment site, a historic religious property and a community anchor that former members want to keep from drifting out of local control.

The group is forming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit so it can raise money and pursue a purchase of the church property, which the Archdiocese of Baltimore closed in 2024 as part of a broader restructuring under its Seek the City plan. The last Mass at St. Ann was celebrated on Nov. 24, 2024, and the closure folded the parish into St. Francis Xavier Parish. For former parishioners, the issue now is whether the building will preserve any religious or community use, or whether it will become just another historic property sold for a different purpose.

A commercial listing puts the stakes in real estate terms as well as spiritual ones. The site is about 8,528 square feet, sits on 0.468 acres, and includes roughly 16,600 square feet of existing improvements. That scale makes it valuable to developers, but it also makes the property one of the most significant church sites in the neighborhood, especially because it sits within the Barclay-Greenmount local historic district, where Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation identifies St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church as a Gothic Revival church.

Former parishioner Erich March said parishioners protested the closing and asked the archdiocese to reconsider, but the answer was no. Another former parishioner told WMAR the group had to pursue every avenue available to preserve the church, a sign of how deeply the building is still tied to personal and neighborhood identity. That emotional pull is rooted in a long parish history that stretches back to the 1870s and reached its 150th anniversary in 2023.

St. Ann’s story has long centered on Captain William Kennedy and the clipper ship The Wanderer. Archdiocese history materials say Kennedy prayed during a storm in 1833 and promised St. Ann he would build a church if saved. The ship’s anchor and chain, brought home later by Kennedy, remain linked to the cornerstone and have become part of the parish’s identity. Catholic Review described those anchors as defining St. Ann in northeast Baltimore for 150 years, underscoring why former parishioners view the building as both sacred space and neighborhood inheritance.

The effort to reclaim St. Ann now sits at the intersection of preservation, property value and community stewardship. If the former parishioners can raise the money, the church could stay in local hands and remain available for some form of religious or cultural use. If not, another historic Baltimore property will move into the market with little guarantee that the neighborhood’s voice will shape what comes next.