Second Presbyterian Church (Chicago)

Second Presbyterian Church organized in 1842 as an offshoot of the city's first Presbyterian congregation, which had formed in 1833. From 1851 until 1871, the congregation worshipped in a church at the northeast corner of Wabash Avenue and Washington Street in downtown Chicago. Known as the spotted church because of the tar deposits in its limestone blocks, this building was designed by the noted eastern architect, James Renwick, Jr. Renwick later designed St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City and the original building of the Smithsonian Institution. Already in the late 1860s, downtown Chicago was becoming more commercial and less residential, and Second Presbyterian's leaders prepared plans to follow its membership to the near South Side. Just a few weeks before the Great Chicago Fire in October 1871, which destroyed the spotted church, the congregation had merged with another congregation and had relocated to the South Side.

Many wealthy Chicago residents attended Second Presbyterian, including members of the George Pullman, Silas B. Cobb, Timothy Blackstone, and George Armour families. These were men who moved to Chicago from New England or New York State in the mid-nineteenth century to make their fortunes and build a new metropolis on the prairie. Proud of their adopted city, they endowed cultural institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's son, was also a church trustee. When the South Side emerged in the 1870s as the city's premier residential neighborhood, the business elite built imposing houses on South Prairie Avenue, South Michigan Avenue, South Calumet Avenue and other streets.[4]

As of 2023, the diverse church had about 125 members.[5] The church "also serves many visitors seeking meals, music, and community" in addition to after-school tutoring, practice space for the South Loop Symphony Orchestra, and a basketball gymnasium.[5]

For its new building on South Michigan Avenue at 20th Street (now Cullerton), the congregation again turned to James Renwick. Renwick designed a church based on early English Gothic examples, with a high-pitched gable roof, a rose window in the east wall, and a corner bell tower. The exterior is clad in limestone with sandstone trim. Sculpture on the exterior is limited; the Four Evangelists and the head of Jesus appear on the entry wall on Michigan Avenue and gargoyles loom from the bell tower. The interior was also thoroughly Gothic, with pointed arches leading to the side aisles, slender iron columns supporting the balcony, and extensive stenciling adorning the walls. The sanctuary in the new building was dedicated in 1874.

In March 1900, fire gutted the sanctuary. The church turned to one of its members, Howard Van Doren Shaw, for the rebuilding. Shaw, 31 at the time, was a graduate of Yale University and the architecture program of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After working briefly in the office of Chicago's skyscraper pioneer William Le Baron Jenney, Shaw established his own practice. Shaw also had traveled extensively in Britain and was familiar with the work of Arts and Crafts architects like Philip Webb and C.F.A. Voysey.[6]

View of the remodeled sanctuary, c. 1902

Shaw, working with his friend, the painter Frederic Clay Bartlett, and several other designers and craftsmen, gave Second Presbyterian a sanctuary firmly rooted in Arts and Crafts principles. Abandoning the original neo-Gothic approach, Shaw lowered the pitch of the roof by 14 feet[5] and moved the support columns closer to the side walls to visually increase the width of the space, and used warm stained oak and plaster panels throughout. He planned an auditorium-style sanctuary, with no central aisle that would seat 1200.[5] This was appropriate for a congregation that emphasized preaching and musical worship. For the same reason, the pews are gently curved, providing good sight lines to the pulpit. The decorative program of the interior is rich, but subdued, emphasizing brown, buff, dusky crimson, and dull gold.

The church's figurative art, with dozens of angels in glass, wood, and plaster, and two brightly colored saints in the lobby windows, is perhaps surprising for a Presbyterian congregation. This congregation, however, was culturally sophisticated and well-traveled. Many members had seen the great cathedrals of Europe and wanted their home church to make an equivalent artistic statement.

In line with the Arts and Crafts ethos, Shaw and Bartlett designed every element of the new interior to work together to create a restful and harmonious whole. Attention was paid to every detail of pew carving, plaster casting, and fixture design. Leading Chicago area designers and craftsmen were employed for elements like the seven-armed electric candelabra flanking the pulpit (William Lau) and the four stately heralding angels standing atop the organ case (Beil & Mauch). Electric lighting was used throughout the sanctuary, and Shaw embraced the naked bulbs as design elements in the circular chandeliers and the fixtures hanging over the side aisles.

A number of recurring motifs tie the various interior elements together. The most obvious is that of the angel. Some 175 grace the interior, including the four heralding angels above the organ loft and those carved into the brackets from which the chandeliers hang. Another recurring motif is the grapevine, found in the pew ends, the light screen at the sanctuary's rear, many of Bartlett's murals, and the dull gold of the screen concealing the organ pipes.[7] The congregation installed a Hutchins-Votey organ following the 1900 fire.[8] The Austin Organ Co. reworked the instrument in 1917 as its Opus 767, providing it with a two-manual console and ten ranks.[9] The organ today has 43 ranks and 2,600 pipes.

Second Presbyterian Church occupies a prominent place in Chicago's social and industrial history and its artistic heritage. Its glorious interior is now being seen by a wider audience after decades of semi-obscurity. Tours featuring the art and architecture of the building are offered on a regular schedule. Friends of Historic Second Church, organized in 2006, was formed to guide the accurate restoration of the building and to oversee tours and events.

Murals

Detail of Bartlett mural

Bartlett's pre-Raphaelite murals are one of the glories of the sanctuary, and they were widely published after their completion.[7] From a well-to-do Chicago family, Bartlett had studied painting at Munich's Royal Academy and with masters in Paris. For Second Presbyterian, Bartlett sought inspiration in the work of medieval church painters. He consciously rejected the post-Renaissance artistic tradition, with its emphasis on perspective and verisimilitude. Bartlett preferred to focus on expressiveness and spirituality, which he found in the flat and serene figures painted on the walls of medieval Italian churches. Bartlett painted directly on the dry plaster of the sanctuary's vertical walls. The paintings in the ceilings of the arches were done on canvas in his studio and then mounted in the church. Bartlett's figures have bold outlines and sumptuous robes of muted blue, crimson, and green. He used gold leaf extensively and supplied relief to features like haloes with a plaster technique known as pargeting.[10]

The majestic 40-foot-wide mural behind the altar represents the tree of life surmounted by a heavenly rainbow. Above that is a celestial orchestra in medieval robes. Bartlett's care in blending decoration to the sanctuary's architecture is evident; his rainbow echoes the curve of the ceiling. Bartlett's work in the twelve bays of the balcony centers on the themes of praise, abundance, and sacred music. Texts from scripture are painted on the walls below the figures.[7]

Many of these murals were restored in the 2010s and early 2020s.[5]

• Chicago Landmark
• List of Registered Historic Places in Chicago

Notes

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Second Presbyterian Church (Chicago, Illinois).

• Friends of Historic Second Church
• Second Presbyterian Church of Chicago
• Chicago Landmarks, Second Presbyterian
• Emporis Buildings, Second Presbyterian