The group from Bonnie Brae Street eventually discovered an available building at 312 Azusa Street () in downtown Los Angeles, which had originally been constructed as an African Methodist Episcopal Church in what was then an impoverished part of town. The rent was $8.00 per month. A newspaper referred to the downtown Los Angeles building as a "tumble down shack". Since the church had moved out, the building had served as a wholesale house, a warehouse, a lumberyard, stockyards, a tombstone shop, and had most recently been used as a stable with rooms for rent upstairs. It was a small, rectangular, flat-roofed building, approximately long and wide, totaling , sided with weathered whitewashed clapboards. The only sign that it had once been a house of God was a single Gothic-style window over the main entrance.