Gutted church was noted for music

CHICAGO -- The architecture was majestic, the gospel choir was inspiring, and the services at the Pilgrim Baptist Church were so popular that worshipers in the 1930s and 1940s had to show up an hour early to find a seat.

On Friday, the 115-year-old church, an integral part of the development of gospel music, was destroyed by a fire so intense that its flames and smoke could be seen from miles away.

The fire gutted the church, and collapsed the roof and steeple. The cause was not known.

''It was a landmark church. God, it was just so beautiful," said Lena McLin, who was baptized at Pilgrim at age 12, in the early 1940s. ''It was very spiritual; you felt you were meeting the Lord there."

McLin's uncle was Thomas A. Dorsey, considered the father of gospel music, and Pilgrim was where he perfected his cross of the raw soulfulness of the blues with the sacred music of his youth.

His all-time greatest hit, ''Take My Hand, Precious Lord," was popularized by Mahalia Jackson. It became a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dorsey was Pilgrim's music director from 1932 until the late 1970s. The church was designated a Chicago landmark in 1981.

Over the decades, the gospel stars who performed at Pilgrim included Jackson, Sallie Martin, James Cleveland, and the Edwin Hawkins Singers.

The funeral service for Jack Johnson, an early 20th century boxing champion, was held at the church.

The congregation recently numbered about 300, but in its heyday in the 1940s it had about 10,000 members, said the Rev. Hycel B. Taylor, the former pastor. It had been ''the quintessential black megachurch," he said.

The church was a place where the architects Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler experimented with the features that made them famous, such as vaulted ceilings, vaunted acoustics, and ornamental designs.

Those designs included terra-cotta panels with foliage patterns, said Ned Cramer, curator of the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

It was built as a synagogue between 1890 and 1891, but it has housed the Pilgrim congregation since 1922. The surrounding Bronzeville neighborhood was a vibrant hub for blacks during the first half of the 20th century.

''It's like hearing a close relative has died, or a good friend. It's heartbreaking," Cramer said. Although no one was injured, it is feared that the church's archives, including old photographs and Dorsey's music were destroyed.

McLin said she was hopeful that Dorsey's wife might have sent some of those mementos to Fisk University.

The family had chosen to deposit some of Dorsey's belongings in the archives at Fisk.

But she is sure a huge painting of her uncle, whom she lived with as a child, was destroyed.

Still, she said, she would never forget the feeling of being in that church, surrounded by thousands of worshipers packed on the floor and the balcony, listening to gospel music.

''The Spirit was just all over the place," she said.