Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia

The church's former building is now the Temple Performing Arts Center, located on North Broad Street in Philadelphia.

The congregation grew rapidly under Conwell's energetic and charismatic leadership, and a new building designed by Thomas Preston Lonsdale, the Baptist Temple, opened in 1891.

With up to 15,000 worshippers every Sunday, it was both one of the first examples of an "institutional church" offering social and educational programming along with traditional services and a precursor of the 20th century mega-church.

He spoke to firefighters and police officers who all asked for an orphanage, primarily to support the children of their fallen comrades.

Martin Luther King Jr. came to speak at Baptist Temple in the early part of the Civil Rights Movement.

"[7] When Dr. Poling was pastor of the church, and plans were underway for a Conwell memorial, a great tragedy occurred.

Many prominent speakers appeared at the Baptist Temple, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., and Helen Keller.

[9] Visiting preachers included George A. Palmer, well-known to the Philadelphia radio audience from his Morning Cheer program.

[10] By the late 1960s, however, its mostly white congregation had largely left the neighborhood and voted to move to the northern suburb of Blue Bell.