Grant boosts preservation efforts of landmark First Church of Deliverance

Bronzeville’s historic First Church of Deliverance, a Chicago landmark that is one the city’s few examples of streamline Art Moderne architecture, has been awarded a $150,000 preservation grant by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The money will help the congregation complete a comprehensive preservation and maintenance plan for the 86-year-old church at 4315 S. Wabash Ave.

“First Church of Deliverance is a sanctuary where gospel music soared and Black modernist architecture came alive,” Brent Leggs, executive director of the trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, said.

“Preserving it means keeping the rhythm of faith, art and community pulsing for generations to come,” he said.

The First Church of Deliverance funding was among five grants totaling $750,000, announced Tuesday by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund’s Conserving Black Modernism initiative. Co-funded by the Getty Foundation, the grants are intended to preserve modernist buildings designed by Black architects.

Built in 1939 and recognized for its minimalist, horizontal polychromatic exterior and iconic twin towers above its main entrance, First Church of Deliverance was designed by Walter T. Bailey, a Kewanee native who was the state’s first licensed Black architect.

Bailey and structural engineer Charles Sumner Duke, who was also Black, converted a plain single-story hat factory into the two-story showstopper.

Here’s a twist: To create the church’s modern look, Bailey clad the building in terra cotta, a material best known for its ability to be molded to replicate historicist architectural details like column capitals and Greek acroteria.

Bailey and Duke also brought the streamline look inside the church, giving the pulpit and choir loft walls curved surfaces and stainless steel trim.

The contemporary look reflected the progressive religious vision of the church’s founder, the Rev. Clarence H. Cobbs.

Under his leadership, the church actively reached out to overlooked members of society, organized soup lines, gave out food baskets and ran a blood bank to help the old Provident Hospital, according to a Commission on Chicago Landmarks 1994 report.

First Church of Deliverance’s late choir director Kenneth Morris introduced the Hammond B3 electric organ to gospel music — a link as revolutionary as the electric guitar coming to rock ‘n’ roll.

The congregation remains active today. And the church’s worship space, which features a large, stunning colorfully lit cross on the ceiling above the main aisle, remains a must-see on the city’s architecture tours, including the Chicago Architecture Center’s yearly Open House Chicago event each fall.

The congregation has already done some important repairs, including restoration of the church’s facade and its picturesque oak front doors, under a $228,000 grant in 2019 from the Chicago Department of Planning and Development’s Adopt-a-Landmark fund.

But much more work is needed, Marcella Thomas, who helps lead First Church of Deliverance’s restoration efforts, said.

The National Trust grant will help the congregation create a preservation plan for the church campus, which includes the 1939 building, a children’s church connected to the south and the Maggie Drummond Community Center & Day Care at 4301 S. Wabash Ave.

“The assessment of the church is first because that’s the anchor,” Thomas said. “That’s the anchor within the community. It has been an anchor for many years and it continues that to be that.”

Thomas said the church’s towers and stained glass, for instance, “are very much in need” of attention, as are the church’s 1946 colorful indoor murals by Chicago artist Fred Jones.

“So, lots of things,” she said. “But we’re looking to do what’s necessary to keep the legacy alive. It’s a privilege to be able to look at such an edifice that someone years ago designed — and the architectural design that Mr. Bailey put forth. It’s something that is very unique.”