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Second Presbyterian Church

Architects
James Renwick Howard Van Doren Shaw, 1900
Year
1874
Style
Gothic Revival
City
Chicago, IL
Second Presbyterian Church
Photo: Andrew Jameson, CC BY-SA 3.0
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Second Presbyterian Church was built in 1874 on Michigan Avenue in the Gothic Revival style designed by James Renwick, drawing some of Chicago's most prominent families to its pews through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A disastrous fire in 1900 destroyed the interior, which architect Howard Van Doren Shaw then rebuilt entirely in the Arts and Crafts style — now considered one of the best-preserved unaltered Arts and Crafts church interiors in America.

the building

Nine Tiffany windows. The rebuilt sanctuary holds nine Tiffany windows, part of an interior that fully embodies Arts and Crafts principles of simplicity, hand craftsmanship, and unity of design — a striking contrast with the Gothic Revival exterior Renwick designed decades earlier.

The earlier 'spotted church'. Before settling on Michigan Avenue, the congregation worshipped from 1851 to 1871 in a building at Wabash Avenue and Washington Street known as the 'spotted church,' nicknamed for tar deposits staining its limestone blocks.

the style

The building pairs two distinct styles from two different moments: Renwick's original 1874 Gothic Revival exterior, and Howard Van Doren Shaw's 1900 Arts and Crafts reconstruction of the interior after fire gutted it — making the sanctuary a rare, fully intact example of Arts and Crafts church design in America.

More on Gothic Revival

the architect

James Renwick designed the original 1874 church in the Gothic Revival style. After an 1900 fire, Howard Van Doren Shaw rebuilt the interior in the Arts and Crafts idiom, giving the building two architects' signatures from two different eras.

significance

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, designated a Chicago Landmark on September 28, 1977, and elevated to National Historic Landmark status in March 2013.

nearby

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