An architecturally important West Side church gets blessed by the National Trust

A West Side Baptist church — once documented by photographer Gordon Parks and listed on the National Register of Historic Places — has received a $500,000 grant to help fix up the 125-year-old building.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund announced Tuesday that it had awarded the funds to the architecturally-significant Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church, 2151 W. Washington Blvd.

The funds will help the congregation repair aged terra cotta pieces and glazed brick on the building's south facade. Other repairs include removing and rebuilding portions of the structure's exterior masonry and stopping water from leaking into the edifice, according to the grant.

The money will also go toward the evaluation or repair of the church's roofing, windows and chimneys.

Though a national effort, the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund has contributed funds to help a number of historic Chicago sites, including the Muddy Waters MOJO Museum, 4339 S. Lake Park Ave., and First Church of Deliverance, 4315 S. Wabash Ave.

"We're thrilled to support so many important projects in Chicago," African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund Executive Director Brent Leggs said. "We believe deeply that to understand a national story, we [must] uplift the cultural assets across the Chicago landscape, including the historically Black churches."

Metropolitan received one of 33 grants — totaling $8.5 million — made to historic Black churches across the country ,under the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.

Officials at Metropolitan said they were aware the church had been awarded the grant, but declined comment until an announcement to the congregation could be made Sunday.

Designed by architect Hugh M.G. Garden and built in 1901 as the Third Church of Christ, Scientist, Metropolitan is as beautiful as it is unusual. The building is clad in light blue glazed brick — a rare color choice for a house of worship.

And with its classical proportions, but modern, almost proto-Art Deco detailing, the church somehow managed to be classic and contemporary for its time.

The church was designated a Chicago landmark in 1989 and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2016.

Metropolitan Missionary Baptist congregation bought the building in 1947. And in 1953, the church caught the attention of LIFE magazine and its famed photographer Gordon Parks.

Parks's black-and-white images documented baptisms, prayer, smiling children in their Sunday finest and the large congregation worshiping inside Metropolitan's glorious sanctuary.

Oddly enough, the magazine ended up not publishing Parks's photos or the accompanying story he wrote. But the emphatic images ended up finding a life of their own and wound up being widely seen.

According to the Gordon Parks Foundation, in the photographer's unpublished manuscript, he called Metropolitan "a temple of hope to thousands of Negro people caught in the backyard of this vast city. It is a haven in a world of unending trouble."

The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund grants were awarded a month after the group handed out $5 million in grants to five historic Black churches on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The churches included Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, 4021 S. State St., where the open-casket funeral of Emmett Till was held after the 14-year-old was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.