If you go to Mt. Calvary Baptist Church today you will be standing on the site where the last Mt. Calvary also stood…more or less.
Before they built this present landmark structure—when they removed the former church building that occupied this site—they also removed a considerable hill on which that building stood.
So it is the same site, only several yards closer to sea level.
The hill where Mt. Calvary was situated was an early distinctive feature in the north end of Mansfield because it rose from the Flats, which made it stand out. It began its civic life as the homeplace of the Willard Hickox family who built an imposing house on the top of the hill.
In the last decades of the 19th century this house served as an office building for the Aultman Taylor factory complex across Main Street. Ultimately AT was retooled and connected into space for the Ohio Brass factory, and the AT office building was abandoned.
That was when the building was adopted by the Mt. Calvary congregation. The Baptists had been in search of a permanent home since their founding in 1918, and the hilltop structure became their church until 1955, when it was removed to make way for the distinctive sanctuary and educational wing we see there today.
