The current Lombardy Romanesque Revival building was built in 1926 and has been listed as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (1978) and on the National Register of Historic Places (2009).

[3][5] According to a history of the church, the congregation's leaders acquired the property on which the current structure sits after hiring a real estate agent "who was very light in complexion."

The Second Baptist Church building, located one block west of Central Avenue at 24th Street, was deemed to satisfy the registration requirements set forth in the Multiple Property Submission for African-Americans in Los Angeles.

[4][7][8] Other sites listed pursuant to the same Multiple Property Submission include the Lincoln Theater (located one block east of the church on Central Avenue),[9] the 27th Street Historic District (a well-preserved residential neighborhood located three blocks south of the church),[10] the 28th Street YMCA (providing a swimming pool and other recreational activities in the years when the city's recreational facilities were racially segregated),[11] the Prince Hall Masonic Temple,[12] 52nd Place Historic District,[13] and two historic all-black segregated fire stations (Fire Station No.

With a seating capacity in excess of 2,000 persons, the church was the largest meeting space owned by the African-American community in the western United States in the era before World War II.

In 1954, the congregation contributed $1,500 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to print the briefs used in the United States Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education.

The church also provided scholarship funds to enable future Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche to attend the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

[4] Other noted persons to speak at Second Baptist include Malcolm X, who delivered an impassioned speech at the church in May 1962 after several Muslims were shot in a gun battle with police in front of the Muslim Temple, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr.[4] In recent decades, the demographics of the neighborhood surrounding Second Baptist Church has changed from an overwhelmingly African-American community to one that, as of 2007, was 40% African American and more than 50% Latino.