Crosses of Chicago

Crosses of Chicago is a series of photographs that documents thirty storefront churches that were located throughout the South and West sides of Chicago between 2005 and 2007. The series captures the bold graphic aesthetic of storefront churches, including hand-painted Latin crosses, signage, and graphic facades, all of which I still find visually compelling. Crosses of Chicago derives from an earlier photographic series entitled Black Type (2001), in which I examined the semiotics of commercial signage in the Black inner-city business districts of Chicago and Baltimore. My interest was also personal. From family members who attended various storefront churches, I have gained greater insight into the often overlooked role and importance of these institutions in their communities.  

Graphic facades are a significant part of the culture of poverty. Although they are not entirely absent from middle-class neighborhoods, the cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky has demonstrated an emphatically negative correlation between the presence of storefront churches in a given district and measures of socioeconomic well-being.(1) The buildings used as storefront churches are typically unremarkable assemblages of modern construction materials. None of the church buildings that I documented in Crosses of Chicago, for example, had a historic landmark designation. But precisely because the buildings are unremarkable, their users sanctify them graphically. In poor neighborhoods, the custom of painting the facade of the building to distinguish it from its neighbors and embellishing it with symbols or lettering is a universal vernacular expression. 

The invitation to contribute to Docomomo US’s special issues on the 2025 annual theme of “Places of Worship,” provided a reason for me to return to the sites that I documented in Crosses of Chicago, now nearly twenty years later. Today, I serve as a Planner for the County of Kane, outside of Chicago, where I have made a concerted effort to spearhead projects that directly improve economically challenged communities. Examples of my planning projects include housing rehabilitation and infrastructure improvements for low- and moderate-income populations. Returning to the storefront churches that I documented on Chicago’s South and West sides solidifies the harsh reality and impact of systemic disinvestment in these communities, as well as the role of these sacred places in helping their members survive systemic disinvestment. 

History of the Storefront Church

Storefront churches emerged in Chicago during the Great Migration, when African Americans moved to northern states to escape the oppression of Jim Crow laws in the South. After World War II, practices such as blockbusting, racial steering, and redlining helped spur rapid racial turnover and economic decline in cities throughout the United States.(2) In 1930, storefront churches accounted for 72% of all churches started by African Americans in Chicago.(3) Redlining limited the buildings that Black people who wanted to create churches could purchase or rent, leading these believers to vacant commercial spaces in disinvested areas.(4) In Chicago, abandoned storefronts were especially popular. The stigma historically associated with the worship styles of these congregations, the graphic facades of their buildings, and the buildings themselves has been a recurring interest of scholars, activists, and writers. In Go Tell It On The Mountain (1953), James Baldwin described a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem, The Temple of the Fire Baptized, where his stepfather was a minister. It was a cramped building, but one that loomed large in his memory and in the lives of the congregants. 

Survival, Adaptation, and Disappearance

 

Many of the storefront churches that I revisited have been able to withstand the test of time and continue to be used for worship, but not all. Some show signs of physical decay and abandonment while others serve new purposes or accommodate new programs. Those that survive have learned to adapt. The Life Redeeming Ministries (LRM) is a great example of a storefront church that has taken advantage of televised and livestreaming services to attract a younger generation. The LRM website, the church’s digital facade, has a modern design and provides links to their social media platforms and event calendars. Like so many other places of worship, the storefront has become part broadcasting studio. Storefront churches in Chicago disappear due to population loss, the aging and death of their members, and lack of economic and community development funding, especially on the South and West sides. Since 1990, population loss in Chicago has concentrated in these neighborhoods, although the city’s Black population has declined in all areas except the North Side, where it has stagnated.(6) A growing number of Chicagoland residents live in the suburbs. In 1950, 37% of the metropolitan population lived in the suburbs. By 2020, over 70% were suburban residents, including half of the region’s Black population, 63% of the Latinx population, and 82% of whites. 

The names of the storefront churches that I documented in Crosses of Chicago are significant. They include Apostolic Deliverance Church, Love Christ M.B. Church (“M.B.” stands for Missionary Baptist), Greater Mount Carmel M.B. Church, Words Chapel M.B. Church, New Jerusalem M.B. Church, and House of Prayer Ministries, to mention only a few. As Robert G. Noreen has argued, “The rapid turnover, reflected in so many church names beginning with ‘new’ or ‘greater,’ might be caused partly by the unstable society, the transient nature of the constituents, and by the fact that individual personalities often establish these churches and when they are gone the leaderless church dies.”(7) Writing in 1963, Noreen also connected the transience expressed in storefront church names to the effects of Urban Renewal and freeway construction.(8) The names of these churches are Biblical, but they also reflect the history of their neighborhoods. 

Preserving “Holes in the Wall”

The Apostolic Deliverance Church, located in Chicago’s Englewood community, was the first storefront church that I documented for Crosses of Chicago twenty-some years ago. Returning to Apostolic Deliverance Church in 2025, the first thing I noticed was that somebody had painted over the large hand-painted cross on the facade of the building. The garage door with hand-painted biblical text was now a standard metal security door. To me, these visual modifications represent a deliberate effort to make the building blend in with enhanced economic development and the infrastructure improvements to Englewood’s main corridor and surrounding blocks, including paved sidewalks, newly planted trees, Smart streetlights, light pole banners, and other aspects of a Complete Streets program. Another economic asset located directly across the street from the Apostolic Deliverance Church is the 63rd Street CSX Intermodal, a major container storage facility. The various infrastructure and transportation improvements were spearheaded and funded by the City of Chicago’s “INVEST South/West” and CREATE Program. 

Many people who drive by or even live near storefront churches might not think much about storefront churches, but these “holes in the wall” are important. The notion of “holes in the wall” was coined by Jane Jacobs in a June 1956 article published in Architectural Forum. “A store is also often an empty store front,” she wrote. “Into these fronts go all manner of churches, clubs and mutual uplift societies. These storefront activities are enormously valuable. They are the institutions that people create, themselves. Sometimes they end up famous. Many real ornaments to the city have started this way. The little struggling ones are even more important in the aggregate.”(9) I agree with Jacobs. I also support adaptive reuse and reinvestment in communities like Englewood that have been impacted by the systemic harms that the City of Chicago now recognizes.(10) For residents living near the Apostolic Deliverance Church, the various economic development and infrastructure improvements are encouraging and long overdue. Storefront churches respond to the changes in their urban environment. Other congregations nearby have redesigned their facades and built additions to generate revenue as event spaces or by increasing their parking area as more people return to the neighborhood.

At the end of this journey, I was most pleased to see that many of the churches I had documented were still in business and serving as hubs of community life. It is my hope that Crosses of Chicago and this essay will inspire all to become more inquisitive about underserved communities of color, the impact of storefront churches, and to document whatever you think is sacred. 

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References

1. Wilbur Zelinsky, “The Names of Chicago’s Churches: A Tale of at Least Two Culture,” Names 50, no. 2 (2002): 83–103. See also Wilbur Zelinsky and Stephen A. Matthews, The Place of Religion in Chicago (Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago, 2011).

2. Asha Kutty, “Milwaukee’s African-American Storefront Churches: ‘Makeshifting’ and Spatial Resilience in Urban America,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review 35, no. 1 (2023): 73–86.

3. Robert L. Boyd, “The Storefront Church Ministry in African American Communities of the Urban North during the Great Migration: The Making of an Ethnic Niche,” The Social Science Journal 35, no. 3 (1998): 319–32, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0362-3319(98)90002-7.

4. “How Did Chicago Become So Segregated? By Inventing Modern Segregation | FIRSTHAND: Segregation,” WTTW Chicago, February 18, 2022, https://www.wttw.com/firsthand/segregation/how-did-chicago-become-so-segregated-by-inventing-modern-segregation.

5. Adora Namigadde, “Nestled between Barbershops and Vacant Buildings, Storefront Churches Are Chicago Fixtures,” WBEZ Chicago, January 25, 2024, https://www.wbez.org/curious-city/2024/01/25/storefront-churches-why-do-chicago-neighborhoods-have-so-many.

6. William Scarborough, Shifting Population Trends in Chicago and the Chicago Metro Area, A Report for the MacArthur Foundation, with Amanda E. Lewis and Ivan Arenas (University of Illinois, Chicago, 2022), https://irrpp.uic.edu/state-of-racial-justice/reports/#shifting-population-trends-in-chicago-and-the-chicago-metro-area.

7. “Ghetto Worship: A Study of the Names of Chicago Storefront Churches,” Names 13, no. 1 (1965): 21, https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1965.13.1.19.

8. It was fitting, then, that one of the Crosses of Chicago photographs was selected in 2007 for the Urban Renewal exhibition at the historic South Side Community Art Center.

9. Jane Jacobs, “The Missing Link in City Redevelopment,” in Vital Little Plans: The Short Works of Jane Jacobs, ed. Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring (Random House, 2016), 71.

10. Chicago Plan Commission, We Will Chicago (City of Chicago, 2023), http://www.wewillchicago.com.

About the Author

Kim Lovely MUPP has a multidisciplinary background that intersects urban planning and graphic design. She is a Planner within Kane County’s Office of Development & Community Services and serves as a liaison between Kane County’s housing, infrastructure projects, and environmental reviews. Prior to this role, Kim worked for the Village of Alsip Mayor’s Office as an economic development intern and MUSE Community + Design as a policy promoter for the City of Chicago We Will Chicago Plan. In her early career, she held the position of Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Baltimore County (UMBC) and was the Senior Graphic Designer for the Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago Public Library.