Greater Union Baptist Church has one of the city’s most breathtaking sanctuaries, with its semicircular ranks of pews that sit beneath muscular, richly-detailed hammer beam wooden ceiling trusses and bronze chandeliers.
The church, 1956 W. Warren Blvd., is just north of the routinely packed-out United Center and next to the stadium’s parking lot B.
Undoubtedly, scores of United Center patrons and passersby have noticed 140-year-old Greater Union’s imposing red brick Romanesque Revival exterior.
The church’s interior is a different matter.
Greater Union has been closed for services since 2022, due to a faulty HVAC system. Gas service to the building is also shut off because of an unpaid $14,000 gas bill.
Built for a congregation of 600, the church has about 40 members now, Greater Union’s pastor, the Rev. Walter Arthur McCray, said.
“The church has not been able to meet and open our doors,” he said. “We have been more cash-strapped than we have been. We are struggling, but we are faithful.”
But the church, a protected city landmark since 2023, is on the north edge of The 1901 Project, the United Center owners’ $7 billion plan to convert the acres of parking lots around the stadium into a new community of residential, retail, park space and entertainment.
Since much of the neighborhood that once supported Greater Union was wiped away by years of callous demolition — and in more recent decades, residences closest to the stadium were bulldozed to create parking — it would be only fitting that the historic church somehow benefit from the new neighborhood that will rise around it.
“There’s great potential,” McCray said. “Great problems and great potential.”
Built in 1886 as Church of the Redeemer, Second Universalist, the building was designed by pioneering architect William Le Baron Jenney.
Jenney’s 10-story Home Insurance Building from 1885 — that once stood at 125 S. LaSalle St. — is credited with being the world’s first tall structure built with a steel frame, earning him the moniker “father of the skyscraper.”
But Jenney went old school with Church of the Redeemer, giving the building 20-inch thick load-bearing brick exterior walls.
The result is a great pile of architecture, done up in dark red brick and matching terra cotta detailing.
The real treat is the expansive, column-free worship space perched on the church’s second floor.
In addition to the trusses ceiling and curved seating, the sanctuary’s other significant features include a trio of large, colorful stained glass windows designed by the Chicago studio McCully & Miles: the sower, the Madonna and charity.
“The glass is gorgeous in this building,” Chicago Architecture Center Senior Director of Public Engagement Adam Rubin said. “And showing a peasant farmer sowing wheat — what we’re seeing in choosing imagery like that of poor farmers is that [Church of the Redeemer was] a church of fairly humble people. It’s an expressive church and it makes the most of the ornament that it has, but … it’s still very kind of connected to the earth and the people who are building it.”
Church of the Redeemer was also a predominantly white and progressive church. According to the city’s 2023 landmarks commission designation report, “the church hosted events and lectures that reflected Progressive Era concerns such as temperance, women’s right-to-vote, and the welfare of children.”
The congregation also raised funds for Wilberforce University, an historically Black university in Ohio.
Greater Union, a predominantly Black congregation, bought the church in 1928 and has been socially active over the last century, involved in issues of civil rights, helping the unhoused and feeding the hungry.
Church services have been held online since 2022.
Greater Union completed $750,000 in exterior masonry repairs this year, funded by the Chicago Department of Planning and Development’s Adopt-a-Landmark program.
“The chimneys were rebuilt, the terra cotta [and brick were] repointed and whole bunch of other technical things were done,” McCray said.
McCray wants to look at the church’s interior next. In addition to sorting out the HVAC problems, other work he wants to tackle includes making the building more accessible and restoring the stained glass windows.
“They are major,” he said. “And we’re talking about upwards of $250,000, $300,000 or more.”
But that’s hard to do with a congregation of 400 people, let alone 40.
Still, in a city where old churches are always subject to decay and demolition — especially as of late — it’s within the public good to help this important building hang on, especially as the neighborhood around it gets redeveloped.
A spokesperson for The 1901 Project didn’t respond to a request for comment. But McCray said the group has generally “made moves to protect legacy folk” in the area.
“The neighborhood is being gentrified — which is good and bad, so to speak,” McCray said. “The church needs to be positioned to reach and serve.”