Editor’s Note: When Hidden City staff writer Christopher Mote’s series “How to Reuse a Church” was published in May, it included the former St. Agatha Roman Catholic Church among the top ten shining examples of adaptive reuse of former church buildings. Designed by renowned Philadelphia church architect Edwin Forrest Durang, St. Agatha opened in 1878; in 1979, the Archdiocese merged it with St. James the Greater to become the Church of St. Agatha and St. James.
Chris’ series provided a positive alternative to the barrage of news involving the demolition or potential demolition of churches, such as the Church of the Nativity in Poplar, 40th Street Methodist Episcopal in West Philadelphia, St. Bonaventure Roman Catholic Church in North Philadelphia, and of course, Church of the Assumption in Callowhill.
However, the inclusion of St. Agatha in this series did not altogether go over well with Caroline Dunlop Millett, who purchased the church and its grounds from the Archdiocese in 1988, on the condition she would preserve the facility and continue its contribution to the community. She felt that our inclusion of this particular conversion did not tell enough of the story, so she volunteered to tell it herself. Below is Caroline Dunlop Millett’s story, in her own words, from the first-person point of view of buying, converting, and ultimately losing St. Agatha’s church, now The Cloisters.
In May, Hidden City’s “How to Reuse a Church: Our Top Ten” post named The Cloisters as one of Philadelphia’s most outstanding historic conversions. Ever since reading this survey I’ve been mulling over my own experiences while buying, renovating, and selling this unusual property. Along with extensive fenced in grounds, it included three historic buildings: St Agatha’s church, school, and rectory. The church runs the whole width of the block at 38th and Spring Garden Streets.

Color photo, circa-1970s, of St. Agatha’s Church | Photo: Archdiocese of Philadelphia, Caroline Dunlop Millett’s collection
Since The Cloisters renovation (1988–1992), over 75 more old churches have been threatened with demolition by Philadelphia real estate developers. Why tear down beautiful historic architecture to build uninteresting new structures? The answer is simple and obvious: in ordinary cases, it is more profitable to destroy than to renovate. But the Cloisters was definitely not an ordinary case. The solutions introduced by our architect Frank Weiss combined historic preservation with cost effective new construction. This innovative approach in itself makes it worthwhile to now revisit my own church story—as a potential model for projects today.
To give you a clear picture I’m providing a short history of St. Agatha’s. The whole story is one of extreme ups and downs—great accomplishments and devastating poverty, grandeur repeatedly destroyed by fires and communities working together joyously, despite fierce opposition.
All this begins just before the end of the Civil War when St. Agatha’s parish was established in an area then called Mantua Village, populated largely by Irish-Americans. The church we see today was dedicated in 1878. It was as grand as many cathedrals, boasting superb marble statuary, copious stained glass windows, and a magnificent soaring steeple topped by a cross (until lightning struck).
In the 1940s, St. Agatha’s parish had 2,500 families in its congregation, still mostly of Irish descent. By 1976, they’d dwindled to 400, and both the church and rectory were closed. The West Philadelphia MOVE crisis greatly exacerbated the 1970s decline. In the 1980s the grounds served as a chop shop for stolen cars. The school basement became a literal garbage dump, and the upper floors gave shelter to drug dealers and their clients. The magnificent church, despite a devastating fire, was still semi-furnished with glorious relics, and all this provided a unique meeting place for prostitutes and their pimps.
The church administrators had certainly tried to stem the tide of this appalling urban decay, but to no avail. Without the resources to save their diocese, they did the next best thing: they sold the property to a preservationist developer who lived in the neighborhood and was committed to revitalizing the community. After turning down commercial developers and sundry slumlords, in 1988 the Catholic Archdioceses of Philadelphia sold the entire block of property to me for $500,000 with the clear understanding that I would preserve the integrity of the architecture, and provide residential homes for the surrounding community. The good fathers made all this possible for me by selling the package at a very moderate price, much lower than strictly commercial developers offered.
For two years, I campaigned for community support from various Mantua and Powelton organizations. (St. Agatha’s was in the Powelton Village Historic District and part of the Mantua neighborhood). After much to do, and what seemed endless arguments, both associations and many immediate neighbors provided strong support for the renovation of the school, rectory, and church. Moreover, my Irish emigrate contractors—80 professional athletes who stayed behind to participate in US sports competitions—transformed themselves into a small army. With my encouragement they wisely hired additional construction workers from the immediate neighborhood, and together the workers saw to everyone’s safety. The 16th Police District officers provided additional and very visible support by stopping by on a regular basis for coffee and donuts. Their presence—along with my 24-hour security guards, and one paroled murderer from Mantua who acted as the gatekeeper—fundamentally changed the community atmosphere. People began to feel safe. By 1991 neighboring friends, families, and children were using the grounds for meetings and special events. They were all welcome to have picnics and play sports on our landscaped grounds, where we had planted thousands of plants and trees.
Before the church renovation began, I had designed, renovated, and decorated the school, creating 50 apartments with a basement health club. All the apartments had garden access and private parking. This conversion retained much of the flavor of St. Agatha’s school, and we preserved the façades, immense windows, and basketball court flooring. I completed the project in 1989 and began renting and selling condos in the school.
Next came the vast Victorian rectory. Leaving the exterior preserved intact, the building was divided into a dozen gracious homes, one-of-a-kind and replete with original architectural detail. Millett Design decorated the new model units featuring original architectural interiors and working fireplaces.
We saved the most complicated and exciting conversion for last: St. Agatha’s church. Architect Frank Weiss considered the project his most important accomplishment, after a lifetime of Philadelphia preservation work. It was his extraordinary idea to build a completely new apartment building within the church, soaring up to the original roof pierced by penthouse windows and balconies. His solution was extremely cost effective, and also made it possible to leave almost all of the original exteriors intact.
As Gene Austin of the Philadelphia Inquirer explained, “three levels of the new church building will extend above the church’s roof line but blend with the structure’s Gothic architecture and retain a churchlike exterior. Weiss said ‘the inner building would hardly touch anything there now’, creating an open area to serve as patios and walkways between the walls of the old and new buildings. … Weiss called St. Agatha’s the ‘landmark of Philadelphia’s Irish-Catholic community.’”
In July of 1990, the Preservation Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, West Philadelphia Coalition of Neighbors, and Millett Enterprises hosted a reception for the opening of the church project. Extensively reviewed by the press, and featured on TV, the historic conservation was celebrated as “the most imaginative historic conversion in Philadelphia.”
Shortly thereafter, the federal government shut down Bell Savings Bank and the U.S. Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) called all the banks’ mortgages, including mine. Then Bell’s CEO ended up in jail, and his wife died, along with another high-ranking Bell executive. I sued Bell. It took me two years to win my case, but I was forced to sell the entire property and give all proceeds to the RTC.
Pennrose Properties bought the package, and marketed the The Cloisters as affordable housing. I lost it, but the church was saved.
After Caroline Dunlop Millet’s interesting essay, more could be said about the actual and legitimate uses to which the former St. Agatha’s property was put in the 1980s, the years before she bought it. After St. Agatha’s and its school were merged into the St. James complex a few blocks away on the edge of the Penn campus, the Archdiocese put a Head Start preschool in the former St. Agatha’s school. Pastor Dan Devine installed Theresa Yanda OSF, a Franciscan Sister, in the church basement offices, where she ran a neighborhood ministry, after-school program, and thrift shop, and invited the Center for Literacy to run an adult tutoring site there, which operated for several years. The rectory was leased to an ex-offenders’ program. The church itself was unheated and mostly unusable due to the heating equipment installed there to maintain what had been the basement-level sanctuary during the parish’s final years; a strange and unfortunate arrangement that testifies to desperation or poor planning that followed the church’s final restoration and a succeeding fire back in the late 1960s or 70s. I attended the 1985 meeting where Father Devine and Sister Theresa met with Tim Spencer, Herman Wrice and other neighborhood activists to decide whether to keep any ministry going at St. Agatha’s. The neighborhood had depopulated and few residents were still church members. Wrice pointed out that the church had been there for the first wave of black residents who replaced the Irish, but added that more successful African Americans had followed the Irish out of the old rowhouse ghettos and projects of Mantua, and few of those who remained were church members. It was clear the priests lacked the energy or resources to expand the programs. So Sister Theresa moved her ministry to the Caribbean, the Head Start was spun off to the control of the parents, who bickered and lost their grants, shutting the preschool down, and the ex-offenders program moved off site, just in time for the sale and conversion.
Very interesting. I lived up on Fairmount Ave as a young child and wondered
what happened to the old church and school.
Is it just me or is there no address for this church ? It looks like the church on spring garden around 38th .
When I read about LAZY developers and TALENTLESS architects who would rather tear down some
glorious structure to put up something that looks like public housing from my youth ( and today unfortunately )
. I point out that conversion ! I wrote a 3 part post on the latest news about the church of the assumption
and I think showed how Philly’s structural gems could be saved by changing some laws and taking a private
sector line of thought to deal with the problem of these short sighted developers. If we tear down all our history then we lose what makes us special . And then were just another boring city run by an incompetent political party
( city council ) blaming their self inflicted wounds on everybody else .
Astalmilkman writes, “Is it just me or is there no address for this church ? It looks like the church on spring garden around 38th .”
The first paragraph of the article gives the address: “The church runs the whole width of the block at 38th and Spring Garden Streets.”
The author sounds like she really, really likes herself. I’m glad that she personally saved W. Philly from the hell fires of the 80’s. She should be working with UCD, the latest in a long line of those that we save us.
I attended St. Agatha school from Sept 1948 till graduation June 1956. I have such fond memories of my time there and of the good IHM Nuns who taught me. The area was still vibrant then, no malls, but just about every store you would need to shop in was on Lancaster Ave, between 39th and 44th, in particular. I can remember how crowded Sunday Mass was each week, and it was great to go to Midnite Mass on Xmas eve. By the time I reached 8th grade, the neighborhood was changing and more and more people were moving away. My family and I also moved away in Feb. 1957, my Freshman yr at St Tommy More HS. Our main reason for moving was an incident involving a man walking in on my grandmom who was alone in the house,and robbed us.Thank God he didnt have a chance to hurt my grandmom but after he was apprehended, it became known of his long criminal record. That was the final straw and we left. I really loved that neighborhood, perhaps more than any neighborhood I have ever lived in. But…its a fact of life….things change. I was very happy to see someone had the good sense to save the bldgs at St Agatha and preserve some of the history of the neighborhood. I have gone back several times and on one visit was able to go inside both the School and Church to see first hand the transformation. It gave me chills to stand outside my old 8th Grade classroom on the 2nd floor which is now an apt. and also to place my fingers in the fountains that once held Holy Water that I blessed myself with. Thank you so much.
This beautifully written and moving commentary by Robert McNulty gives me a great deal of pleasure. Although my own work at St. Agatha’s was completed a long time ago, my accomplishments there remain important to me. It’s wonderful to share this experience with others today.
Thank you Caroline Millett. I recently found this article
because I am doing research on my house on Fairmount Ave in the 50s.
Bob, I just noticed your message aabout Saint Agatha school. We werre students there together until the end of 7th grade when my parents moved to Delaware County. Would love to somehow hear from you and catch up a bit. Armond Perretta
Wow, my sister just sent me this article and it just brought back so many memories. Good ones. Our family left the same time as the McNulty’s and moved to MBS Parish Southwest Philly (their artifacts are now in St Bede’s Holland Pa)I can visit there and remember growing up in 2 great parishes.Started Freshman year at West Catholic Girls High. I was blessed with 2 GREAT Parishes that are now no longer holding services. So very sad but so glad I had the opportunity to be part of thesesimpler times communities. Thank you Clare Kronemeyer and Caroline Millett for this article. I will print it out for my children and grandchildren.
I grew up at 37th and Lancaster and went to St. Agatha’s from 1945 until we moved to New Jersey in October 1951. I have fond memories of the church and school and am still in contact with one friend from that time. I and glad that they did not tear down the place and I do like what has been done. Kudos to Caroline Millett.