Welcome to the New Brown Memorial website. We are delighted that you have visited us here. Our church is 65 years old. Our founders were hard-working people from the south, and their old-time tradition of friendliness, hospitality, insightful sermons, traditional gospel music, and caring for fellow man and woman, is part of who we are. Although we are a small church, our visitors come from around the world. We have been celebrated in books like the New York Times bestseller The Color of Water and the film Red Hook Summer by Spike Lee. But more importantly, we pride ourselves in our belief that helping our friends and members through difficulty, celebrating their joys and sharing their sorrows, is part of what we are put here on this earth to do. We are delighted to meet new visitors of all types. We hope you come to see us and meet our wonderful minister, Chaplain Rev Alfred Adams.
Featured Programs
Bible Study/Prayer Meeting – Wednesdays 7:00 p.m.
History
New Brown Memorial Baptist Church has been in place for 65 years. It is the first black Protestant Church in Red Hook.
New Brown was organized by Rev. Andrew Dennis McBride and his wife Ruth McBride in December 1954. The first services were held at their residence at 811 Hicks Street (Apt 5A) in the Housing Projects in Brooklyn, New York. The church was named after the Reverend W. Abner Brown of Metropolitan Baptist Church of Harlem, at the time one of the largest African American churches in the world and today a registered New York City Landmark. Reverend McBride and his wife Ruth were members of Metropolitan – he was a Deacon and she was the church secretary. Rev. Brown married them in his office in 1941.
The first services of New Brown were held in the McBride’s apartment, with a white tablecloth tossed over the kitchen table, which served as pulpit. Sunday School and other services were held in the homes of the six founding Red Hook member families: the Ingrams, McNairs, Floods, Bonners, Jacksons and Taylors. Many of those founding families stayed with New Brown faithfully until they passed on to reward.
Through prayer and with the aid of the Holy Spirit, the church moved to its first official building at 177 Richards Street in Red Hook in 1955. At the time, the white landlord of the building refused to rent to blacks. The McBrides were a mixed race couple – Ruth was white and Rev. McBride was black, so Ruth went alone and signed the lease. When the landlord saw Brother Thomas McNair walking into the doorway of 177 Richards with a paint bucket and tools, he wanted his building back. But Rev. McBride talked him out of it. 177 Richards was a dilapidated first floor walk through, unheated and in need of repair. Services were heated by a fireplace with wood that the congregants brought each Sunday for service.
