The visual impact of this massive building symbolizes the Baptist ascendancy in the city at the turn of the twentieth century. Court Street Baptist is the oldest Baptist congregation in southeastern Virginia, tracing its roots to 1789, when the Portsmouth and Norfolk Baptist Church was established in Portsmouth. As with Hunt's other Baptist churches in Norfolk and Newport News, the Richardsonian Romanesque is transformed into a highly idiosyncratic design. The exterior is constructed of pink rusticated rock-faced granite with limestone trim. Two towers flank a recessed porch formed by immense arches on the west facade. Although at six stories the right tower is twice the height of the left, the latter terminates in a fanciful cylindrical cupola. Both are capped by somewhat Byzantine-looking onion roofs.