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In Pictures: Shepherd's Temple Baptist Church

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 26, 2012 10:00PM

Last week Chicago lost a major piece of its architecture history with the demolition of Shepherd's Temple Baptist Church. The city issued an emergency demolition of the structure in December, after trying in vain for two years to get the Byzantine-revival style structure into code compliance.

The structure at 3411 W. Douglas Blvd. was originally built in 1913 by the architecture firm of Aroner & Somers at a cost of $100,000, and was home to Anshe Kenesseth Israel synagogue, the largest American Jewish congregation outside of New York City. Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir is believed to have attended either temple or Zionist meetings during her brief stay in North Lawndale, back when the neighborhood was known as "Chicago's Jerusalem." Rachel Shteir, writing for Tablet magazine, described the interior.

"the synagogue could seat approximately 3,500 people in its heyday. The building featured a magnificent auditorium with an enormous balcony, beautiful stained glass, and a terracotta façade. “There were chandeliers with Stars of David on them,” said Vassal. It was the biggest synagogue in the community, holding 35 Torah scrolls, according to Irving Cutler, an amateur historian of Chicago Jewry."

Nearly a half-century later, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. established a home base in Chicago in the neighborhood, he gave a speech on the steps of the house of worship, by then known as Friendship Baptist Church. The building was purchased by Abundant Life World Outreach Ministry, a group associated with toothy televangelist Joel Osteen.

Perservationists tried to rally to save the building—Preservation Chicago placed the building on its seven most threatened list last year—but as WBEZ's Lee Bey pointed out in a column last week, the efforts should have happened at least a decade ago, and would require, as Preservation Chicago's Jonathan Fine told Shteir, "a big wad of cash."

A petition drive that started in January garnered 500 signatures, and only one person deigned to show up at the court hearing last month when the emergency demolition permit was approved. Scavengers had already stripped the church of copper wire, aluminum and other scrap metals.

And another piece of Chicago's past fades into the ether.