On June 30, Preservation Chicago was proud to co-sponsor the inaugural screening of a remarkable new virtual reality film by architect and preservationist John Vinci, presented to a sold-out audience at the Arts Club of Chicago. The evening began with a reception at 6:00 PM, followed by a program at 6:30 PM in which John Vinci was interviewed by architectural historian Lee Bey about the making of the film, the significance of the building, and his personal relationship to the building over a period of many decades.
The subject of the film is one of Chicago’s most significant, and most heartbreaking, architectural losses: the KAM/Pilgrim Baptist Church at 33rd and Indiana Avenue, designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan and completed in 1891 for the Kehilath Anshe Ma’ariv congregation. It was one of the great buildings of the first Chicago School of Architecture.
In 1927, the congregation sold the building to the Pilgrim Baptist Church, which made it a cornerstone of Chicago’s South Side gospel music tradition; the church’s modest alterations — a baptismal font, choir platforms, and murals by the celebrated Black artist William Edward Scott — layered new meaning onto Sullivan’s extraordinary interior. The building was destroyed in a devastating fire in January 2006, a painful moment in Chicago’s history that still hurts decades later.
Vinci’s 13-minute virtual reality film project is an extraordinary effort produced in partnership with virtual reality filmmaker Razin Khan, and with project support by Ward Miller and Preservation Chicago. The film uses extensive archival photographs, architectural drawings, and three-dimensional reconstruction to bring the building back to life on screen — allowing viewers to move through and experience the interior as it appeared both as KAM synagogue and later as the Pilgrim Baptist Church.
Preservation Chicago has been a close partner in this project across its multi-year development, and we were honored to sponsor its public debut. We are currently partnering with John Vinci on an even more ambitious virtual reality film recreation of Louis Sullivan’s Chicago Stock Exchange Building.
The sold-out house on June 30 confirmed what Preservation Chicago has long believed: Chicagoans care deeply about KAM/Pilgrim Baptist Church and remain optimistic that one day it will be rebuilt. The VR film is not only a work of architectural history — it is a tool for the future, one that can help donors, planners, and community members visualize the extraordinary possibility of adaptive reuse.
We congratulate John Vinci on the completion of this remarkable project.