The busy intersection of 79th Road, Stony Island and South Chicago avenues — the place the Chicago Skyway ramps lash overhead and the suited-and-booted Nation of Islam brothers promote the Closing Name newspaper — holds one in every of Chicago’s most uncommon architectural finds.
It’s the Rev. John L. Conner Fellowship Corridor, a Moorish Revival dream rendered in polychromatic brick and terra cotta at 7901 S. Stony Island Ave. There’s even an honest-to-goodness decorative minaret poking above the constructing’s Spanish tile roof.
In-built 1928 as a high-toned restaurant known as Raphael’s, the constructing — owned by close by Haven of Relaxation Missionary Baptist Church, 7925 S. South Chicago Ave., since 1964 — has been a visitors stopper and curiosity on the intersection for practically a century.
“It was the place to be,” Haven of Relaxation Church Clerk Annette Dewberry mentioned.
The constructing has certainly seen higher days. Whereas the outside nonetheless seems to be comparatively good at practically 100 years outdated, long-deferred upkeep and Father Time have wreaked havoc on its as soon as wonderful inside. A lot so, that the constructing is unusable.
However the congregation needs to get the outdated corridor rehabbed, restored and reopened by 2028. They’re trying to increase $5 million towards the hassle.
Church officers final month gave a presentation on the constructing’s structure, historical past and their plans for its future earlier than this system committee of the town’s Fee on Chicago Landmarks, a primary step in in search of a designation for the construction.
The congregation can also be in search of a $10,000 grant from the preservation group Landmarks Illinois to cease the constructing’s sieve-like roof from leaking, whereas planning the following steps of the renovation.
“It was designed to be one thing helpful locally,” Dewberry, a pacesetter of the church’s restoration committee, mentioned of their bid to get the constructing again on its toes. “I believe that’s the main motive for it to be landmarked.”
Structure as escapism
You can get misplaced within the architectural particulars of the two-story constructing’s predominant entrance alone.
A filigreed burst of gold and blue terra cotta arcs like a rainbow over the principle entrance. A vivid eight-point star medallion, much like the Khatim motif discovered on basic Islamic structure, sits above the double-door entry.
And that’s only for starters. The constructing is bathed in historical Center Japanese architectural prospers.
The construction was designed by Frederick Stanton, an architect whose surviving Chicago commissions embrace a Twenties multi-unit condominium constructing at 4824 N. Damen Ave., and the Plaisance Flats at 6104 S. Woodlawn Ave.
His Raphael’s was structure as escapism: A 450-seat restaurant and tea backyard designed to make an evening out in town really feel like a visit to a faraway Center East or Far Japanese land.
“This isn’t a constructing in Teheran, Persia, however it’s a restaurant which is being erected on … our personal South Aspect,” a Chicago publication wrote in 1928.
The constructing’s eating room mimicked an exterior courtyard, surrounded by second flooring home windows and halls with views of the area.
Some film palaces of the time — known as “atmospheric theaters” — had been designed this manner too, giving patrons the sense they had been sitting in an open courtroom in an unique international locale watching a movie.
The Music Field Theater, 3733 N. Southport Ave., is one instance. So is Raphael’s neighbor and architectural cousin, the closed 2,200-seat Avalon Regal Theater, a Moorish Revival venue at 1641 E. 79th St., inbuilt 1927 and designed by John Eberson.
As a restaurant, Raphael’s supplied dinner, dancing and an 11-member dwell orchestra known as Raphael’s Persians, led by bandleader Herb Zeller.
The Presto-Occasions, a Chicago music commerce journal, wrote in 1929 that Raphael’s “is so constructed that the acoustics are splendid, giving a resonance that’s certainly very pleasing to the ear.”
Raphael’s closed across the finish of World Battle II and was later transformed into the American Legion South Shore Put up 388.
The Haven of Relaxation congregation purchased the constructing in 1966 and held providers there till their present church was inbuilt 1977.
A ‘place of gathering’ — once more
It’s exceptional that the constructing was capable of retain its unique important features as a spot for folk to sit down down, meet and eat — for nearly a century below three totally different homeowners.
I toured the corridor in 2017 to take scouting photographs for my guide, “Southern Publicity: The Ignored Structure of Chicago’s South Aspect,” and the constructing was in adequate form to host an occasion that occurred throughout my go to — whereas serving up some good-smelling meals from the ovens within the corridor’s business kitchen.
However no extra. At the least, not now.
Dewberry mentioned the congregation utilized for the Landmark Illinois’ $10,000 Timuel Black Jr. Grant Fund for the South Aspect final summer season. The group mentioned it might evaluation the appliance in about two weeks.
“I fairly actually wasn’t conversant in the constructing when [Dewberry] first reached out to us,” Landmarks Illinois Director of Reinvestment Suzanne Germann mentioned. “Once I noticed it, it was like, ‘Oh!’ My coronary heart simply beat — oh, my God, I fell in love.”
Germann mentioned the group despatched out a professional bono skilled marketing consultant to look at the constructing and create a situations evaluation report that particulars the corridor’s issues. “After which they’ve that [report] in hand to go in search of additional further funds from different sources as properly,” she mentioned.
Haven of Relaxation restoration committee member Jessica Smith mentioned the rehabbed constructing may host a variety of community-centered makes use of, together with, in fact, a meals pantry and a banquet corridor.
“Simply to be that place of gathering,” she mentioned. “Which is what it all the time has been.”
