Olivet Baptist Church

Address: 3101 S. King Drive 
Architect: Wilcox and Miller
Date: 1876
Style: Gothic Revival
Neighborhood: Bronzeville/Douglas

Overview
Olivet Baptist Church is the oldest extant African American Baptist church building, and the second oldest African American church congregation, in the city of Chicago. Located in the Bronzeville/Douglas neighborhood and near the Lake Meadows housing development, Olivet has a legacy of prominent Black leadership stretching back to the 19th century. Many of the congregation’s pastors have been influential at various political levels, including during the National Baptist Convention and the 20th century Civil Rights Movement. During the Chicago Race Riots of 1919, the church fought to maintain peace, and later served as a community center during the 1920s, as the Great Migration brought an influx of African Americans from the South, to many northern cities, including Chicago.

In 1918, Olivet Baptist Church purchased the Gothic Revival church at 3101 S. King Drive. It was originally built for First Baptist Church of Chicago in 1876 by the early Chicago architecture firm Wilcox and Miller. Following the death in 1990 of Joseph H. Jackson, who served as pastor for nearly fifty years, the church struggled to maintain its stature in Chicago’s African American community. In recent decades, the number of parishioners has declined significantly and portions of the church are effectively closed due to deferred maintenance.

Despite its storied history and architectural pedigree, the property is not formally recognized as a historic landmark by either the City of Chicago or National Park Service. A sensitive, but pragmatic, rehabilitation would bring the church back to its full operation and allow this Chicago institution to remain standing. .

History
The contemporary Olivet Baptist Church was first organized in 1850 as Xenia Baptist Church in the heart of Chicago. Following incorporation in 1853, the church became known as Zoar Baptist Church. In 1857, Zoar erected a church on the corner of Harrison and Griswold, today the location of the LaSalle Street “L” station. In the years before the turn of the 20th century, growing numbers of Black migrants from the South joined the congregation. Church governance of a previously modest but now growing congregation became increasingly difficult. In 1858, roughly sixty members seceded from Zoar Church and formed the Mount Zion Church in a wood frame storefront on Clark Street in Downtown Chicago. The two congregations later reunited in 1862, under the name Olivet Baptist Church, with a total of 132 members. The new congregation continued to worship at the Zoar Church building until 1865.

As Olivet saw its congregation increase, after an early wave of northward African American migration after Emancipation and the close of the Civil War, it relied on the city’s other Black churches for aid in finding a new church building. The congregation met at a temporary location until 1868, when a bigger church was completed in the South Loop under Reverend Richard De Baptiste (1831-1901), famous in the National Baptist community. After this first building was burned down, either in the Chicago Fire of 1871, or ensuing 1874 fire, the church was rebuilt at a different downtown location by Architect B. J. Bartlett.

In 1903, 600 people were listed as members of Olivet Baptist Church. While African Americans comprised just two percent of Chicago’s population by 1910, there were nearly two dozen African American Churches in the city. Many of the Baptist churches serving the African American community established during this period were offshoots of Olivet, the city’s oldest, and at the time, largest African American Baptist church.

By 1917, there were over 2,600 people in attendance at Olivet’s Sunday services with hundreds still being turned away, many of whom were recent migrants from the South. To accommodate its increasing membership, Olivet purchased its church building from the First Baptist Church in 1918, which had a 3,000-person capacity. The official turnover between the congregations was marked on the second Sunday in September,1918, with a parade from the old building to the new church, singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” as they processed. In addition to a dramatic increase in capacity, the new building also signaled a shift away from an increasingly commercial and expanding downtown area, and toward the less dense neighborhoods to the south.

The building at 3101 S. King Drive, still operated by Olivet Baptist Church, was designed in 1875 by William Wilcox (1832-1929) of Wilcox and Miller (1875-1877) in a Gothic Revival style. The exterior of the church is clad in a rough ashlar veneer, trimmed in Joliet limestone, providing the facade with a rustic appearance. The church’s most striking feature is its steepled square corner tower, rising 160 feet above the street, which once contained an elaborate steeple. The church’s large arched windows are situated between foliated capitals inspired by the French Gothic architecture, and feature trefoil tracery. The church features strong massing and prominent square engaged columns, marking the end of its large nave beneath a gabled roof. Throughout all its primary facades the church exhibits high articulation and stands prominently on 31st and King Drive.

Beyond its architectural merits, Olivet played a direct role in stimulating migration with the advertisement of opportunity, jobs and housing in Chicago, primarily through the influential Chicago Defender newspaper. During the Great Migration, from 1916 to 1970, millions of African Americans relocated from the rural South to industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Within this period alone, 500,000 Black migrants arrived in Chicago. Olivet served as a community center for new migrants, offering forty different social, cultural, and economic organizations. The Church grew to approximately 10,000 congregants in 1920, making it the world’s largest African American congregation as well as the world’s largest Protestant church at the time. The Church touted a 2,500-seat auditorium and lecture room on the first floor, and on the second and third floors a club and rooms for Sunday school.

In addition to providing direct social services, the Church became increasingly involved in labor relations and municipal politics. The Church has only had three pastors since 1916: Lacey Kirk Williams, Joseph H. Jackson, and the current pastor, Dr. Michael A. Nobell. Lacey Kirk Williams was a nationally renowned Republican until his death in 1940 via plane crash while traveling to the G.O.P. convention, an affiliation consistent with Abraham Lincoln’s emancipation platform and Republican-led Reconstruction in the South. Joseph H. Jackson served as pastor for nearly fifty years before his death in 1990. Both Williams and Jackson ascribed to Booker T. Washington’s accommodationist approach to achieving civil rights, focusing on economic uplift rather than social and legal action. In the 1960s, amid the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Jackson frequently clashed with Martin Luther King, Jr., feeling his approach, while nonviolent, was perhaps overly confrontational.

Threat
Since the 1990 death of pastor Joseph H. Jackson, leader of the church for almost fifty years, the congregation has significantly dwindled in numbers. As with countless churches across Chicago and the nation, an aging congregation, demographic shifts, and the considerable demands of maintaining a large, aging structure have all proved challenges. Since then, Olivet has struggled to recover its stature in Chicago’s African American community. The Church retains ownership and continues to hold services in a smaller section of the church, though the building itself shows signs of increasing deterioration. The Church’s masonry is stained and overgrown with vegetation and the roof and many of the windows throughout appear in fair to poor condition. Additionally, there are previous inappropriate repairs such as the corner church steeple and spire replacement, whose design, while well intentioned, are incompatible with the church’s historic character.

Recommendations
Formally pursuing City of Chicago Landmark status is a natural first step for Olivet Baptist Church, a path Preservation Chicago recently recommended at a public meeting of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks. Weatherproofing the exterior envelope of the church and addressing a series of open code violations likewise remain top priorities. With significant public subsidy and/or private assistance, the church would hopefully be positioned to fully reopen its grand sanctuary. City of Chicago Adopt-a-Landmark funding is unfortunately on paus at the time of this writing, but national programs such as the National Fund for Sacred Places and the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preserving Black Churches are both excellent candidates for private support. Serious consideration should likewise be given to investment opportunities for both an adjacent, modernist school wing (currently vacant) and a large, underutilized surface parking lot. Whether via lease, partnership, or outright sale, monetization of both spaces could support larger rehabilitation efforts for the grand church structure.