Recent Awards
Pilgrim Baptist Church has been selected as one of three churches to be honored as a recipient of The Award of Excellence Presented by the Gospel Music According to Chicago Foundation (G-MAC). Pilgrim’s significant contribution, legacy and achievement in gospel music in the community, Chicago, and world have merited Pilgrim Baptist Church the honor of this prestigious award. The official presentation will be made on Friday, June 4, 2010. visit http://www.gm2chicago.com for details.
History of Pilgrim Baptist Church
Pilgrim Baptist Church was originally designed as a synagogue for Chicago’s first Jewish congregation, Kehilath Anshe Ma’ariv. The congregation engaged one of its own members, Dankmar Adler, along with his partner, Louis Sullivan, to design the building at the corner of Indiana and 33rd Street on Chicago’s South Side. Drawings were prepared by a young draftsman named Frank Lloyd Wright.
Constructed in 1890—91, the synagogue was a perfect melding of Sullivan’s design and Adler’s acoustics, and was celebrated by its contemporaries for its unique form and style.
In 1921, the recently founded Pilgrim Baptist Church purchased the former synagogue. Pilgrim Baptist quickly became one of the largest and most influential African-American congregations in the country, led by its ground-breaking pastor, Rev. J. C. Austin, Sr. The formation of the Pilgrim Baptist Gospel Chorus in 1932 by the father of gospel music, Thomas Andrew Dorsey, would give Pilgrim Baptist its greatest fame. Under Dorsey’s direction, Pilgrim Baptist nurtured gospel music’s most legendary singers, including Mahalia Jackson, James Cleveland, and Roberta Martin. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and later designated a Chicago Historic Landmark in 1981.
On January 6, 2006, workers repairing the roof as part of a $500,000 renovation effort accidentally sparked a fire that quickly spread throughout the church. Within hours, the historic landmark that saw the birth of gospel music and sheltered one of the country’s most significant African-American congregations lay in ashes, with only the four masonry walls and a few charred artifacts remaining. Pilgrim Baptist, one of two remaining auditoriums designed by Adler & Sullivan and their last surviving example of ecclesiastical architecture, was virtually destroyed. The remaining masonry walls had to be stabilized in order to prevent them from falling down.
Immediately, the congregation determined to rebuild its church. Considering the architectural and social significance of the original structure, sentiment was strong both within the church and in the Chicago community as a whole to reconstruct Adler & Sullivan’s structure within the ruins of the original building. With this in mind, the remaining walls were stabilized, conditions were surveyed, and debris was carefully documented and removed.
Help Us Rebuild
All donations received by this special website will be deposited in a special account designated solely for the rebuilding of this Historic Landmark Structure designed by Adler and Sullivan.