Former worship houses’ new soul
ST. LOUIS — St. Louis is a town of believers: in traditions, in community and, perhaps most especially, in second chances.
That grace is extended to its buildings as well as its people.
“St. Louis likes to save old things, not tear old things down,” said Chris Hansen, executive director of the Kranzberg Arts Foundation.
The nonprofit runs the Grandel, built in 1884 as a First Congregational Church, which now includes a 600-seat theater and the Dark Room, a bar, music venue and gallery.
The Grand Center structure is one of dozens of left-for-dead houses of worship across the region that have been resurrected as entertainment venues, fitness centers, high-end lodging and a skate park. For many, the reinventions echo their original callings as spirit-lifters, celebration-holders and champions of history and the arts.
In Webster Groves, Mo., a century-old church that had cycled through at least five congregations was reborn in 2018 as the Tuxedo Park STL Bed & Breakfast Inn, following a rescue effort by owners
Bill and Maureen Elliott.
In Granite City, Ill., the nucleus of a downtown makeover is a genre-expansive establishment — the old Niedringhaus United Methodist Church — that’s slated to open early this year as The Mill.
Last summer, the burned-out National Memorial Church of God in Christ finished its transformation from an impromptu, though precarious, rendezvous for picnicking, pop-up weddings and photo backdrops with the help of a Grandel Square neighbor, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation.
“We saw potential,” said Kristin Fleischmann Brewer, the deputy director of public engagement.
The foundation spent about two years shoring up the structure but didn’t replace the roof, which was consumed by a fire in 2001.
The new Spring Church is open to the sky — and open to the community, every day from sunrise to sunset.
Abby Frohne, director of marketing at the Center of Creative Arts, doesn’t like to credit divine intervention for COCA landing its striking University City location, but she doesn’t discount it, either.
“It was a fortuitous situation,” she said. In the mid-1980s, as the idea for the nonprofit was taking shape, the B’nai Amoona Jewish congregation was preparing to leave Trinity Avenue for a new home in Creve Coeur.
The congregation moved out, and COCA moved in. Developer Richard Baron remodeled the midcentury modern synagogue, designed by Erich Mendelsohn in the 1940s, converting the altar into a theater and offices into classrooms and workshops.
One element was left untouched: the windows. The sweeping walls of glass allowed light in on the Sabbath, when traditional Jewish practice prohibited the use of electricity.
“It comes in from above,” Frohne said. “There are windows in places and spaces you wouldn’t think.”
Now, they illuminate students learning to dance, paint, act and sing.
Work on the building can seem neverending. But rehab headaches are worth it, Frohne said.
“It was created as a hub of the community and a place for gathering. It still is.”
When Stray Dog Theatre was founded in 2003, “we were truly stray dogs,” said artistic director Gary Bell. Plays were staged around town, with the goal that, eventually, the offbeat performance company would find a forever home.
Then, the congregation at the United Church of Christ, next door to Bell’s house in Tower Grove East, started dwindling. Stray Dog began putting on shows there, and in 2007, the pack of actors took over the church entirely.
Physical changes were minimal. Bell
was skeptical when the architect suggested the pews stay but figured he could change his mind later.
He didn’t.
“Sitting together is very communityoriented,” Bell said. “And our mission is very community-oriented.”
Perhaps no vision has seemed as farfetched as the one industrial designer Dave Blum and builder Bryan Bedwell had for St. Liborius in north St. Louis. The Gothic Revival relic from the 19th century, once boasting a robust German Catholic population, had fallen into disrepair even before the archdiocese decommissioned it in 1992.
Twenty years later, the cathedral was teetering on the precipice. Windows were shattered; copper, torn out. Rain poured through the roof and rotted the floor.
Amid that spectacular mess, Blum and Bedwell pictured air walks, kick turns and flip tricks: a skate park called Sk8 Liborius. They acquired the complex 11 years ago from the Karen House, a homeless shelter that had been using the convent next door. “The whole place is a story,” Blum said. The Sk8 Liborius team still has a long way to go. Blum estimates it will take $1 million to bring the building to code and open to the public. Skaters will be able to buy memberships or drop-in passes. Programming for teens and young adults will cover printmaking, woodworking, videography and construction.