The Sanctuary That Lasted One Day

The Gothic church ahead is not the congregation's first building on this spot, because the first one lasted barely a single day. The congregation dedicated a brand new sanctuary on a Sunday in October of eighteen seventy one. The Great Chicago Fire broke out later that same night and burned the new building to the ground before the pews had cooled from the dedication service.

It would be more than four decades before the congregation finished the church you see now. Construction began in the early nineteen tens under the architect Ralph Adams Cram, working in a heavy Gothic Revival style with dressed limestone walls, and the building was dedicated in nineteen fourteen. At the very same time, Cram was also serving as the architect of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City, one of the largest churches ever attempted in the United States. His Chicago commission is long finished. His New York cathedral, started years before his Chicago work and still missing towers it was designed to have, remains officially unfinished to this day, a reminder that even an architect as accomplished as Cram could not always control how long his biggest projects would take.

A second architect, Howard Van Doren Shaw, added the parish house, cloister, and garden that still surround the sanctuary, giving the complex the quiet, almost monastic feel it has today in the middle of downtown traffic.

So the stone church on your right is really a story about patience: one fire, one unfinished cathedral far away, and a congregation that simply built again until something finally lasted.