The author of the blog One Step Up, which covers public housing in Chicago, invited me to join her in taking photos of 6th Presbyterian, the ruined old church at 36th & Vincennes. Apparently it’s slated for demolition soon. I’d been meaning to visit it, so I jumped at the opportunity.
Of course, I also enjoyed seeing a few other sites in the area, which is constantly changing as it’s redeveloped.
The church in question was built in 1879 as the Sixth Presbyterian Church. In 1969, Sixth merged with Grace Presbyterian, a black congregation, to form Sixth Grace Presbyterian, which is still located at 35th & Cottage Grove.
The building has been used by at least one congregation since, but has clearly been empty for a while. It has begun deteriorating very rapidly.
Some traces of its former beauty remain, but not for long.
Perhaps most exciting, I was able to get a few shots inside, despite the very effective board-up of the building.
See a few more of my photos here, or see Megan’s here (including some action shots of yours truly).
Update: Here is Megan’s post on the church.
Hey, it’s great to see that you’re blogging again. It took a while for me to find your posts, since I usually rely on an RSS reader, and your old feed broke.
I love the photos, as always!
I picked about the worst possible time to re-start my blog, actually, since my life became totally insane about the same time, and is just now slowly starting to return to some semblance of normalcy. Hopefully I’ll pick it back up again soon!