First Baptist Church I
Life Span: 1844-1852
Location: SE Corner LaSalle and Washington
Architect: TBD
The very First Baptist Church was built in 1841 on the SE corner of Washington and LaSalle streets. A new church was erected in 1854 on the same location. This building was replaced by the Chamber of Commerce building in 1864. The First Baptist congregation built a new building on the SW corner Wabash and Hubbard Court Streets. The previous First Baptist Church building was purchased by the Second Baptist congregation and was moved to the SE corner of Morgan and Monroe streets.
History of Chicago, A. T. Andreas, 1884
During the year 1835, Rev. Isaac T. Hinton became the successor of Rev. A. B. Freeman. Mr. Hinton was by birth an Englishman, but came to Chicago from Richmond, Va. He was a very able and highly erteemed preacher, and a very warm-hearted and genial man. Under his ministrations the membership of the Church and the attendance upon religious services considerably increased, so much so that they began to need a larger building. Rev. Mr. Hinton was sent East to solicit aid for the erection of a suitable house of worship, and returned with the small sum of $846.48. This disappointment nerved the members to active effort for themselves, and soon the foundations of a new house were laid, and much of the woodwork prepared; but on account of the financial crisis of 1837, the building was never completed. Instead, a frame building (Temple Building), which was being used as a temporary workshop, was converted into a church, and with occasional enlargements, served the purposes of the congregation until 1844, during which year a larger edifice was erected. It was a brick building and stood at the southeast corner of Washington and LaSalle streets, where the Chamber of Commerce afterward stood. It was fifty-five by eighty feet in size; there was a basement eight feet high, divided into two rooms, for lecture and school purposes; it had an Ionic portico of six columns; the apex of the spire was one hundred and twelve feet from the ground; in the spire were a bell and clock, the clock having five dials, one on each side of the spire, and one inside the church; the total cost of this church edifice was $4,500.
On October 20, 1852, the church building caught fire from sparks falling from the tobacco-pipe of a workman, who with others was engaged in re-shingling it, and it was totally destroyed. The next day a meeting was held, and a committee appointed to build a new church. The corner-stone was laid July 4, 1853, and the building was dedicated November 12, of the same year. The cost of this building was $30,000. It was also during Rev. Mr. Burroughs’s pastorate that the Wabash Avenue Baptist Church was organized, mainly by members of this Church. Dr. W. G. Howard, formerly of the Second Baptist Church of Rochester, was chosen pastor in May, 1856. In the following September Union Park Baptist Church was organized, and in November the North Baptist Church, mainly from members of the First Baptist Church. Dr. Howard resigned his pastorate in 1859, and removed to New Orleans, having added two hundred and twenty new members to the Church.
- First Baptist Church I (1844-1854)
Map Surveyed and Published by Henry Hart
1853
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