Welcome History Ministries Organ Rev. Weaver Contact Us

Fort Dearborn site of early worship services

First Presbyterian Church of Chicago

First Presbyterian, Chicago's first chartered church, was built on the ashes of the Blackhowk uprising, rose from the ruin of the Great Chicago Fire, and today stands tall as a beacon to its community.

The First Presbyterian Church of Chicago laid its foundation on June 26, 1833, in the carpentry shop of the second Fort Dearborn on the south bank of the Chicago River. There, the Rev. Jeremiah Porter, a young Congregationalist, led 26 parishioners banded together as standard-bearers of faith in the rough-hewn young village. Only the garrison and a few hastily assembled log cabins separated the town from the wilderness, and prairie wolves wandered where no streets had been laid.

"You perceive we have many things to encourage us to go forward in the good work of the Lord", Porter wrote to a friend. "The Sabbath by multitudes is most shamefully abused; twenty stores and groceries are dealing out liquid death, while there are but two real temperance stores in the place and those kept by members of my church. In addition to these evils, profaneness prevails to an extent such as I never witnessed before. The teams from the Wabash that visit us daily, seem to be loaded with cursing and bitterness. The drivers appear almost as degraded as the miserable heathen around us. But profaneness does not stop with them. Many who call themselves gentlemen and move in the highest arch of society are embellishing, or polluting, almost every sentence they utter with some oath or curse. My soul is sick hearing them as they pass in the streets."

Left: Philo Carpenter, druggist, real estate investor, abolitionist, Elder

Right: Rev. Jeremiah Porter, missionary, first pastor, military chaplain in Civil War

Soon the small flock of Calvinists migrated to a new home, constructing a frame church on the southwest corner of Clark and Lake Streets, considered by some members too far out in the prairie for convenience. Many who lived across the river had to paddle across by canoe, then scramble up the muddy bank and thread their way across a log spanning a marshy pool.

The frame structure, though unprepossessing, represented Chicago's largest public hall and enabled the church to forge the first links in ties that remain secure more than 175 years later. The church served as a town hall, arena for debates, venue for the city's first amateur concerts and occasional host for the Chicago Lyceum, center of the village's cultural life. Additionally, the church's Ladies Aid Society funded the first 18 months' salary of Miss Eliza Chappel, the city's first public school teacher and, not long after, the young pastor's bride.

In time the church extended its involvement with the affairs shaping the city and the nation. The congregation stood in the front ranks of the fight against poverty, intemperance and slavery. In October, 1845, the church rocked the presbytery with a resolution denouncing slaveholding as a "heinous sin against God."

"What then may we do to abate this evil? We can cultivate correct sentiments and feelings in our own breasts. We can pray for the slave and his master... We can address ourselves directly to the South, urging them by the love of Christ to apply themselves to the redemption and elevation of a degraded, oppressed and suffering race," counseled pastor Henry R. Curtis, under whose leadership the church built bridges across the ethical chasm that divided the nation until the end of the Civil War.

In addition, women of the congregation, through the ecumenical Ladies' Benevolent Society, raised money for the needy, worked to improve the lives of immigrants and set up an employment service. First Presbyterian also joined with the temperance movement gaining force in Chicago in the mid-19th century. Church members also helped organize the Chicago branch of Washington Temperance Society, participated in street demonstrations against alcohol sales, protested city election tampering and founded several mission outposts.

During the same time period, First Presbyterian started towards its present home with a series of southward moves to larger buildings. The frame church was moved and enlarged twice before the construction of the "Brick Church" at Clark and Washington streets in 1837.

By the mid-1850's, the city's burgeoning commercial center hemmed in the church, and the congregation bought a lot on fashionable Wabash Avenue between Congress and Van Buren, near the Auditorium Theater's current site. Proceeds from the sale of the "Brick Church" funded First Presbyterian's new "Marble Church" as well as Third Church on the West Side and Westminster Church on the backwater of Pine Street, now Fourth Presbyterian Church on North Michigan Avenue.

First Church's splendid new edifice, rich with ornamental stonework, featured one of the Midwest's finest pipe organs, and the congre- gation enjoyed its first hymnals. A visiting Englishman described the church as a "religious clubhouse...with a complete kitchen and restaurant apparatus with expensive suites of apartments in which twice a month the ladies give entertainments. The Sunday School rooms are made inviting with pictures, elegant furniture, and in some places by fountains and natural flowers. Nowhere in the world are there such striking proofs of the tireless vigor and power of Christianity as in the new prairie town." But the fixtures and furnishings vanished overnight when the Great Fire raged through Chicago in October, 1871. The only parts of the church to survive the flames were the official records, the communion service, the library - and the spirit of the congregation. First Church arranged a merger with Calvary Presbyterian, already in the process of building a new church (in the elite Prairie Avenue district at 21st Street and Indiana Avenue) that would boast the city's tallest steeple.

The next decades marked a period of growth for Chicago and prosperity for the church, which recruited such luminaries as Marshall Field for its Board of Trustees while continuing is philanthropic mission of helping those in need, including newcomers to the city. An influx of Chinese immigrants, for example, prompted the church to engage an interpreter to translate the service for these new members.

In the early years of the 20th century, the church debated another move south, finally agreeing to a merger with the 41st Street Presbyterian Church and relocated to 41st and Grand Boulevard, now King Drive. Mergers with the Sixth Presbyterian Church in 1918 and Woodlawn Park Presbyterian Church in 1926 paved the last lap of the road to First Church's present home at 64th Street and Kimbark Avenue, dedicated on October 14, 1928.

Only about a year after this stately edifice opened its doors to worship, the nation found itself plunged into the Great Depression, and the church's 100th anniversary found the congregation suffering economic hardship. The church surveyed its members to determine their employment situation and organized a committee to deal with the problem of unemployment. Meanwhile, an ambitious centennial celebration drew thousands to eight days of events, including the unveiling of a commemorative tablet at the Old Fort Dearborn exhibit at the Chicago World's Fair.

Membership rose, and the church expanded its community outreach programs and supported a wide variety of civic and charitable causes. During the 1940's, First Church welcomed into membership Japanese Americans who left the west coast. After the war, a committee on refugees brought to the city, and into the church, several families who had suffered political oppression in their native lands.

World War II triggered societal forces that again confronted First Church with a changing community. To accommodate wartime population pressure, property owners began dividing apartments into smaller "kitchenette" units. The shortage of housing available to people of color, combined with mounting hysteria over the expanding ghetto, set the stage for real estate exploitation in Woodlawn.

First Church leadership sensed the rising call for racial equality and in 1953 decided to remain in Woodlawn and welcome all from the community. By 1956 the congregation had achieved a substantially multi-ethnic character, most dramatically manifest in the interracial co-pastorate of Ulysses B. Blakeley and Charles T. Leber.

At the time of it's 125th anniversary, the church faced formidable challenges: first, a falling membership; second, the faltering conditions in the surrounding community. The University of Chicago announced its South Campus plan which expanded the campus south of the Midway, thereby, replacing Woodlawn housing and people with offices and classrooms. The neighborhood was also threatened by an apathy that seemed to leave area residents unable to plan at all. Without an infusion of power and purpose, the people of Woodlawn seemed apt to lie still until the bulldozers arrived to bury them.

Although most of its parishioners lived outside the immediate area, the church recognized its mission in preserving and promoting the Woodlawn community. Pastors Blakeley and Leber, with other clergy of the Woodlawn Ministerial Alliance challenged the University's expansion. First Church helped establish The Woodlawn Organization, which picked up the banner of activist Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, dedicated to eradicating apathy in disadvantaged communities. The Woodlawn Organization served notice to City Hall by rolling 40 bus loads of Woodlawn residents for voter registration.

These two standard bearers fought on in the war on poverty of the spirit until 1963 and 1964, respectively, and were succeeded by Harold Walker, Jr. and John R. Fry, who led the church through some of its most arduous passages.

Despite vigorous efforts, part of the Woodlawn population remained trapped in poverty, chaos and despair. To break free, the people needed a sense of identity, pride and access to the nation's rights and privileges. The church addressed these challenges through community education including the first Head Start program in the city; job training for adults; a Sisterhood program for young women at risk; and a relationship with a group that, in the turbulent '60s, appeared as a positive force for change: the Blackstone Rangers.

At this time the "Ranger Nation" numbered 1,500. Rev. Fry saw this group as an indigenous, well-organized source of black power for the city's South Side and the civil rights movement. Yet the group's force was dissipated in delinquent activity and violence that increased in response to City Hall's repressive tactics of police harassment, numerous arrests on minor charges, high bail and "sitting out" periods in jail.

By 1966, First Presbyterian's outreach efforts were paying off. Promised police protection from rival gangs, the Rangers surrendered more than 100 weapons to the church in the presence of police and Treasury Department officials, an act that later mired the church in controversy.

During the West Side riots, the Rangers maintained a 24-hour phone center at the church and sent members to help defuse disturbances on the streets. Two years later, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, the Rangers patrolled the area and prevented the outbreak of violence that struck many other areas in Chicago and other cities on that night.

First Presbyterian's efforts continued to meet resistance from City Hall, which was displeased that a $970,000 Federal Economic Opportunity Grant went directly to T.W.O. rather than through the city. In June 1968, the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations conducted hearings on the program, accusing the church of harboring guns and ammunition, condoning the use and distribution of marijuana, and sanctioning orgies. Additionally, Rev. Fry stood accused of passing on a murder command from a jailed Ranger member. By request of the church session, the Presbytery of Chicago investigated the charges and in 1969 filed a 2,500-page report vindicating Fry and his staff. Two years later, worn by the struggle, Fry stepped down, leaving the church in the care of supply pastors for five years.

The congregation called Arthur M. Smith to be its pastor in 1976, and the church showed its continued commitment to Woodlawn through programs such as pre-school and after-school classes for 6- to 12-year olds, a community garden cultivated on three vacant lots near the church, a reestablished Woodlawn Ministerial Alliance, a weekly Food for Life program that now feeds about 125 meals each week. The Rev. Smith remained at the helm for 11 years, and was followed in 1987 by Gerald S. Wise. The pre-school and after-school programs were closed in November, 2007 because of low enrolement. Rev. Wise left First Church in January, 2008, for service at the First Presbyterian Church of Ft. Myers, FL.

Rev. James Roghair lead the congregation through a period of transition from February 2008 to October 2009. On October 18th the congregation welcomed the Rev. Reggie Weaver to its pulpit. Supported by a faithful congregation as diverse as it is dedicated, First Presbyterian Church of Chicago continues to bring the word of God to the world.