During its heyday in the 1920s, Pilgrim Baptist Church provided the spiritual leadership and fervent Sunday morning jubilee one would expect from any strong black church.
But the South Side house of worship also offered a few more worldly accommodations, like one of the few telephones available to blacks for miles around. Church historians say the phone was such a necessity for congregation members--many used it to call relatives down South--that two women were hired just to manage its use.
"They had a system going," said Rev. Floyd Davis, a third-generation pastor of the church, located in the heart of the Bronzeville neighborhood, once dubbed Chicago's Black Metropolis. "People would stop in to make calls and stop by after work to pick up their messages."
This revealing cultural detail is one of many that will be is one of many that will be shared over the next few weeks in the Black Church Heritage Tours, an event organized by Inspired Partnerships, a non-profit group that helps religious congregations manage their aging buildings. Part architectural jaunt, part black history lesson, the tour attempts to highlight both the culture of black Chicago during the days of segregation and the architectural significance of these edifices today.
Whether they provided the first stage for gospel legends like Mahalia Jackson or a first platform for political figures such as the late Mayor Harold Washington, black churches were the hub of religious as well as cultural, educational and political life in the African-American community.
"These buildings are not just places of worship that are used just one day a week," said Leroy Kennedy, chairman of the committee that oversaw tour planning for Inspired Partnerships. "These buildings have a historical context, and I think people should know that."
In the last few years, interest in urban church and neighborhood tours, especially for those in the black community, has risen significantly in Chicago and across the country, historic preservationists say. According to the Chicago Architecture Foundation bookstore, tour participation has increased, as have requests for books on historic Chicago churches.
The number of church tours for the city's estimated 200 to 300 historically significant religious structures is also increasing. Since 1990, for instance, church tours have either been added or expanded by major architectural tour groups such as Inspired Partnerships, the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois and Chicago Architectural Foundation.
Preservationists are adamant about the importance of the tours because they fear they may not be able to save all the old religious edifices in the city. That is because under Chicago's landmark ordinance, religious congregations are the only historic building owners who have the option to decide whether they want their buildings designated as Chicago landmarks.
The majority of the churches on the tour originally were built for wealthy white congregations, including two Jewish synagogues. Though many of the neighborhoods are now impoverished, historians say they still have great intrinsic and cultural value.
Larry Murphy, associate professor of history at the Garrett-Evangelical Seminary at Northwestern University, said most of the churches in the tour once were home to some of the city's most prominent black congregations.
"In some ways the churches at one time had a higher profile," said Murphy, who participated in a seminar about black churches held last month for the annual convention of the National Trust for Historic Preservation held in Chicago. "These were the old-line, silk-stocking congregations."
The Inspired Partnership tours, funded by the Chicago Community Trust and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, began last weekend and will take place every Saturday and Sunday, except Thanksgiving weekend, through Dec. 8.
Organizers say funds raised by the tours will be used to pay the tour guides--all Chicago high school students who attend the churches--and to refurbish the structures, all of which are more than a century old.
The tours center on six churches located on the South and West sides:
- First Baptist Congregational Church at 1613 W. Washington Blvd., which survived the Chicago Fire of 1871. Designated a Chicago landmark, First Baptist was begun in 1869 by anti-slavery crusaders.
- Metropolitan Community Church, a former synagogue designed by architect Solon Beman and built in 1889. This church, at 4100 S. King Drive, held regular poetry readings and choir festivals and, during its prime in the 1950s, had a multiracial congregation of more than 10,000 people.