The North Brentwood AME Zion Church at 4037 Webster St is located on the south side of Webster Street. The reason why that’s so historically interesting may not be obvious.

When African-American families started moving into the area that would become North Brentwood at the turn of the 20th century, there were no churches.

A group of residents began meeting for weekly services at the home of James and Virginia Holmes, which still stands today at 4514 Banner St. That group soon split into two congregations, one Baptist and one Methodist.

The Methodists moved to another private home, then to the Firemen’s Hall. But they wanted to build their own church and the trustees had their eye on a plot of land on the south side of what was then called John Street.

As the National Register of Historic Places notes: “At this time, John Street is the unofficial line between the white community on the south and the black community on the north.”

But, unlike the covenant restrictions that were later used to enforce segregation, this was an unofficial rule, so there was a way around it.

“Undaunted, the congregation pressed on with persistent prayer,” the church notes on its website. “Their prayers were answered when Judge Arnold, a fair white man, purchased the land and sold it to the congregation.”

Isaac D. Arnold, who lived in Brentwood, was the Justice of the Peace for Prince George’s County, a job he held for 22 years, as well as a shoe salesman with Hahn’s Shoes, a popular D.C. chain.

The only mention of Arnold, who died in 1945, in the Washington Post was of a trial he presided over in March of 1926, in which the defendants had argued that their case would not be fairly presided over by a woman magistrate in Hyattsville.

The church was completed on July 8, 1920. A front-gabled gothic building, the church is made of painted brick, a rarity at the time in North Brentwood.

It stands today as one of the city’s landmarks and home to an active congregation.