“As membership in organized religions has declined in the past half-century, many disused churches around the city and suburbs have been turned into apartments, condos, theaters, arts spaces and even a township’s office.
“The decline has been particularly visible in Catholic churches. Chicago’s once-dominant faith built hundreds of churches, often magnificent, soaring structures. But in the past four decades, the number of parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago has shrunk by more than half — from about 450 in the mid-1980s to about 216 now.
“One of the most interesting church conversions is in South Chicago, a city neighborhood from 79th to 95th streets along the lakefront.
“The brightly daylit gym and cafeteria at the Great Lakes Academy charter school had a past life as St. Mary Magdalene Church, which closed in 2015 after six decades of use.
“There’s a climbing wall in the apse, the semi-circular space at one end of the former sanctuary, where a mural of the crucifixion of Jesus used to be. Clear glass replaced stained glass in the three huge rose windows. They poured sunlight onto the gym floor, which is now a regulation-sized basketball court but was previously lined with wooden pews.
“‘I loved it when I saw what they had done,’ Ebonie Durham, Great Lakes Academy’s executive director, told WBEZ’s Reset.
“Durham joined the staff in June 2022, shortly after the space was transformed. Officially called the Katherine Myers-Crum Enrichment Center, after the woman who founded Great Lakes in 2014, the old church is now where students play basketball and volleyball, where the school serves three meals a day and where faculty and other groups meet.” (Rodkin and Simons, WBEZ Chicago, 1/27/25)