A modernist East Chicago, Indiana, church that mixes architectural Neo-Expressionism with 1970s futurism has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The funds will help the congregation of St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church develop a plan to repair and restore the edifice designed by the late pioneering Black Chicago architect Wendell Campbell, an East Chicago native.
“This [grant] is really an opportunity for them to step back, create a plan that outlines the existing conditions, create a road map that can really help them reach their goals in terms of preserving this building,” said Brandon Bibby, senior preservation architect at the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
And that’s an important step toward preserving the 53-year-old building, 4200 Alder St., in Northwest Indiana. The church, still visually arresting, is showing signs of its age.
St. Mark applied for the grant. The church’s officials didn’t return calls seeking comment.
Architect Kurt Garner, who helped the congregation get the church listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2023, said he was glad St. Mark got the funds.
“To have a building designed with that level of sophistication and symbolism is really quite unique,” he said. “I’m so happy for the congregation.”
Built in 1973, St. Mark is one of the finest works of Campbell’s distinguished 50-year career.
The church complex includes a fellowship hall, classrooms and offices. But the signature piece is the church’s sanctuary: a sharply-done exercise in material and geometry.
St. Mark’s dominant, multifaceted folded plate roof — married to a base of brick, wood and glass — gives the church’s exterior a geodesic look. Under that roof is a nicely-turned worship space that is naturally-lit, open and sublime.
With its bold, rhythmic forms, the church is Neo-Expressionist — a kind of architecture that rejected the glass box modernism Campbell would have studied as an Illinois Institute of Technology architecture student under Mies van der Rohe in the 1950s.
“My understanding is when [St. Mark’s pastor Rev. St. Clair Williams] along with other officers of the church were meeting with Mr. Campbell, Pastor Williams was sitting at his desk with his hands folded,” former St. Mark’s pastor Rev. George Walker Jr. told the Northwest Indiana history site Regionology. “Wendell Campbell looked at his hands and said ‘That’s a unique structure there.’ So [the design] is actually in the symbol of praying hands.”
Garner said Campbell’s roof system was ahead of its time.
“The panelized roof system is something that didn’t take off, I would say, until the 1990s and 2000s,” he said.
St. Mark’s design also beckons the future — the optimistic tomorrow that was envisioned in the 1970s.
“It’s an absolutely beautiful building,” Bibby said. “In terms of a case study on how to preserve this type of structure, I think this is going to be a really interesting project. They’ve had lots of roofing issues over the years, which is understandable because of the complex geometry, so being a part of helping them understand the complexities of that and honoring the architect’s original intent [will be good.]”
The grant was among five awarded late last month, as part of the National Trust’s Conserving Black Modernism Initiative, a 5-year-old $4.65 million grant partnership between the trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and the Getty Foundation.
Bronzeville’s streamlined Art Moderne First Church of Deliverance was a recipient last year.
“Conserving Black Modernism has helped communities in nearly every region of the U.S. protect the work of Black architects and has helped broaden the very definition of modernist architecture,” Joan Weinstein, director of the Getty Foundation, said.
And what a great way to give some proper shine to Campbell, especially now. His largest project, Gary’s Genesis Convention Center from 1981, was green-lit in June for demolition by the Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority.
Fortunately, the area is still left with a wealth of his work from clever midcentury houses in Chatham to the 1970s high-rises at 1240 N. Lake Shore and 4170 N. Marine drives, which he designed with one-time partner John Macsai.
In 1971, Campbell also co-founded the National Organization of Minority Architects, a group that has done much to diversify the architecture industry.
“There is the architectural significance of the church being [designed by] Wendell Campbell being one of the NOMA founders,” Bibby said. “We have tried to make it a priority to uplift the NOMA founders and their work and be a part of honoring that legacy.”