The preservation of religious structures has been on my mind because I lectured on the subject in Planning class Monday, and also because I met Thursday with Bob Jaeger and Tuomi Forrest of Partners for Sacred Places, a national organization that helps religious congregations fulfill their mission with their buildings, which is to say that they help save religious buildings. And I was thinking about it because I was in Washington Friday and the Post reported on the landmark designation of the Brutalist Christian Science Church pictured here.

The church was designated over the objections of its owners, something that can’t be done in Chicago thanks to a last-minute, one-sentence amendment duct-taped to the Chicago Landmarks Ordinance 20 years ago. Twenty years ago is when the “church” preservation issue emerged as a national concern and I developed some expertise by virtue of experience in the issue, being involved in local efforts to save Holy Family and St. Mary of the Angels churches (successfully), doing a citywide survey of historic houses of worship in 1990, and serving on task forces and committees that created a local “church” preservation group, Inspired Partnerships, that operated through the 1990s. We also tried to challenge the “church exception” to the landmarks ordinance and failed, not because our 1st and 14th amendment issues were wrong, but because the case was not ripe. Continue Reading

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