Second Presbyterian Church is a landmark Gothic Revival church located on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, United States. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some of Chicago's most prominent families attended this church. It is renowned for its interior, completely redone in the Arts and Crafts style after a disastrous fire in 1900. The sanctuary is one of America's best examples of an unaltered Arts and Crafts church interior, fully embodying that movement's principles of simplicity, hand craftsmanship, and unity of design. It also boasts nine imposing Tiffany windows. The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and later designated a Chicago Landmark on September 28, 1977. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in March 2013.
History of the congregation
Second Presbyterian Church organized in 1842 as an offshoot of the city's first Presbyterian congregation, which had formed in 1833. From 1851 until 1871, the congregation worshipped in a church at the northeast corner of Wabash Avenue and Washington Street in downtown Chicago. Known as the spotted church because of the tar deposits in its limestone blocks, this building was designed by the noted eastern architect, James Renwick, Jr. Renwick later designed St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City and the original building of the Smithsonian Institution. Already in the late 1860s, downtown Chicago was becoming more commercial and less residential, and Second Presbyterian's leaders prepared plans to follow its membership to the near South Side. Just a few weeks before the Great Chicago Fire in October 1871, which destroyed the spotted church, the congregation had merged with another congregation and had relocated to the South Side.
Many wealthy Chicago residents attended Second Presbyterian, including members of the George Pullman, Silas B. Cobb, Timothy Blackstone, and George Armour families. These were men who moved to Chicago from New England or New York State in the mid-nineteenth century to make their fortunes and build a new metropolis on the prairie. Proud of their adopted city, they endowed cultural institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago. Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's son, was also a church trustee. When the South Side emerged in the 1870s as the city's premier residential neighborhood, the business elite built imposing houses on South Prairie Avenue, South Michigan Avenue, South Calumet Avenue and other streets.
As of 2023, the diverse church had about 125 members. The church "also serves many visitors seeking meals, music, and community" in addition to after-school tutoring, practice space for the South Loop Symphony Orchestra, and a basketball gymnasium.
Original appearance of the church
For its new building on South Michigan Avenue at 20th Street (now Cullerton), the congregation again turned to James Renwick. Renwick designed a church based on early English Gothic examples, with a high-pitched gable roof, a rose window in the east wall, and a corner bell tower. The exterior is clad in limestone with sandstone trim. Sculpture on the exterior is limited; the Four Evangelists and the head of Jesus appear on the entry wall on Michigan Avenue and gargoyles loom from the bell tower. The interior was also thoroughly Gothic, with pointed arches leading to the side aisles, slender iron columns supporting the balcony, and extensive stenciling adorning the walls. The sanctuary in the new building was dedicated in 1874.
In March 1900, fire gutted the sanctuary. The church turned to one of its members, Howard Van Doren Shaw, for the rebuilding. Shaw, 31 at the time, was a graduate of Yale University and the architecture program of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After working briefly in the office of Chicago's skyscraper pioneer William Le Baron Jenney, Shaw established his own practice. Shaw also had traveled extensively in Britain and was familiar with the work of Arts and Crafts architects like Philip Webb and C.F.A. Voysey.