150 years ago, the Memorial Church of the Holy Comforter was built in Point Breeze. Yet, the now-historic church almost certainly won’t be around to see even one more year. In fact, its continued existence might be down to days.

Its current owners, 19th Street Baptist Church, as well as the Department of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) and others familiar with the church at 1249 S. 19th Street all say that absent a truly divine intervention, it will be demolished by the end of the year, and potentially as soon as Monday, September 16. That would mark a sudden end to an otherwise long and winding story, in which numerous individuals have attempted to save the building for several decades.

The leaders of 19th Street Baptist Church, which has owned the building since 1944 and by whose name it is commonly referred to today, said that their attention has turned toward salvaging materials, including stained glass windows and an old church bell, and attempting to see if a connected school-slash-parish house can be saved. The latter is in better condition than the main sanctuary, said church pastor Reverend Wilbur D. Winborne, Sr., adding that he and other staff are currently working with an engineer to file a report with L&I to potentially make a case for saving it. The congregation vacated both spaces several years ago and currently worships at the Navy Yard.

However, members of the preservation community say there are factors beyond the oft-maligned machinery of the City’s agencies that have led to the likely demolition of the 19th Street church, including the stewardship of the building by church leadership. Thaddeus Squire, a philanthropic management professional, has for years worked alongside other preservation experts, such as University of Pennsylvania professor and architectural historian Aaron Wunsch, to try and secure either philanthropic support or private financing to restore the building. Now, on the precipice of demolition, Squire said no small amount of responsibility for the failure to save the structure falls on the church itself.

In turn, the church’s current leadership points to racial and economic transgressions, dating all the way back to a disputed endowment transfer in the 1940s, which, they claim, deprived their congregation of many millions of dollars that could have been used for proper upkeep of the church.

It is a complex, contested tale. It is also undeniably a sad one.

The Birth of a Blue Collar Congregation

The church’s start as Memorial Church of the Holy Comforter was a decidedly more joyous occasion. According to a history contained in the building’s successful nomination to the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places in 1984, credited to Jefferson M. Moak, former executive secretary of the Philadelphia Historical Commission, the church was a Furness & Hewitt-designed structure created to support a kind of working-man extension of Old City’s prestigious St. Peter’s Church congregation.

In 1868, the nomination notes, the Lewis family of Philadelphia, members of St. Peter’s, founded and funded a mission in the southwest of the city connected to the church. Originally occupying different, temporary grounds near 19th and Federal Streets, daughter Margaretta S. Lewis donated several tens of thousands of dollars to construct The Memorial Church of the Holy Comforter, named in honor of her deceased mother.

The 1984 nomination places the creation of the church in further historical context. Following the Civil War, the “tremendous growth” of the city saw the transformation of Point Breeze and Gray’s Ferry from farmland to residential neighborhoods, especially as industries sprung up “along the railroad line on Washington Avenue.” But there was a dearth of churches: while the “spiritual needs of the Episcopalians” were served by the Church of the Holy Apostles at 21st and Christian Streets, the nomination states, an 1876 atlas showed Holy Comforter as the only large church south of Washington Avenue.

“Several other churches owned property and/or buildings in the area, but did not possess the extensive facilities as [sic] Holy Comforter,” the nomination notes. “Of the church buildings located in the neighborhood in 1876, none save [Holy Comforter] have survived.”

In a 2012 article for Hidden City, Wunsch further explored the history. In the mid-19th century, the newcomers to this section of Philadelphia were primarily working-class Irish and Scottish immigrants and their native-born families, Wunsch noted, to an extent that a roadway to the area from Old City was at the time designated “Irish Tract Lane.” Some of these families had converted to Episcopalianism and “Old St. Peter’s wished to see more of them,” Wunsch wrote, and so founded Holy Comforter as a mission church. “Holy Comforter was meant to engender both devotion and socio-economic uplift,” he concluded.

The church’s cornerstone was laid at the corner of 19th and Titan Streets during an official ceremony on June 15, 1874, according to an article in the next day’s Philadelphia Inquirer. Placed within it was a box that reportedly contained, and presumably still does, the following: a “Holy Bible, Book of Common Prayer, copy of the Churchman of June 13, 1874, copy of the Episcopal Register, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other daily papers, gold and silver coins, and a parchment” marking the occasion. “The Memorial Church of the Holy Comforter will, when completed, be quite an acquisition to this growing neighborhood, and will supply a want which has long been felt,” the Inquirer concluded.

Godly Shrine, Serpentine Design

One may think it odd to design a Christian church with a serpent-like facade. Yet, there one presently sits in South Philadelphia, the quirky product of the vision of architects George W. Hewitt and Frank Furness.

The selection by the congregation of the venerable Furness & Hewitt architecture firm to design its new church was “not surprising,” notes the 1984 historic nomination. Hewitt had trained in the offices of Joseph Hoxie, John Notman, and John Frasher, it observed, meaning he likely previously worked on several other Episcopalian churches constructed during that era. That work carried over into the firm Fraser, Furness & Hewitt as the architects of several additional Episcopalian churches in Center City, Germantown, and Roxborough.

Hewitt is credited as the primary architect of Holy Comforter, but also shared a “common language” with Furness, Wunsch noted, evidenced by “the building’s wayward massing, playful asymmetries, and delightful (perhaps winking) palette.”

The 1984 nomination further details the original construction design as a “simple A-frame church,” with a corner tower that was once crowned by an octogonal, 120-foot-high spire. Attached was a two-story Sunday school building, which shared with the sanctuary architectural features including stonework and archways, while also topped by its own smaller corner tower and church bell.

Perhaps the church’s most notable design feature is its exterior “serpentine” stone facade, green in color, which Wunsch wrote gives the church the air of “an alien green projectile launched by old-line Protestants into a burgeoning red-brick neighborhood,” and its color and scale-like appearance mimics that of a snakeskin.

Wunsch also mused that the choice of the green serpentine stone could have been an homage to the homelands of the church’s original congregants. However, in time the feature would also prove a complicating factor in the building’s demise.

Rebirth as a Baptist church

By 1944, St. Peter’s congregation had declined to “roughly 250 souls,” notes the 1984 historic nomination, and, with financial resources dwindling, determined to close its mission work at the Holy Comforter in Point Breeze. It found a ready buyer in 19th Street Baptist Church.

“In [St. Peter’s] wake came different stewards, voyagers in the Great Migration who brought new life to so many of the city’s aging religious structures,” Wunsch noted. “Along with a baptismal pool and other physical changes came passionate sermons, a legendary choir, and visiting dignitaries.”

Reverend Winborne said the church, like many Black congregations, has served an outsized role in the surrounding community. In its early days at 19th Street, the church was a vibrant place with full morning and evening services. At different points, it was visited by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other religious leaders. It was also valued as a true sanctuary against the hardships of a once-segregated and still-unequal America.

“When you think about the African American church, and when you think about the climate and culture of the day, if you’re in a Black Baptist church on Sunday–you’re a preacher, deacon, trustee, choir member–you are somebody,” Winborne said in an interview. “Because when you’re going back out into the community, when you look at the elements of racism and segregation, the church is your oasis.”

Winborne also connects that era of oppression to the church’s modern day struggles. When exactly the church building began to encounter serious maintenance issues is unclear, but the historical record suggests it has been a slow, mostly unabated slide toward deterioration. By the 1984 nomination, the Historical Commission described the church’s condition as poor, with “deteriorating stonework and several of the original doors replaced.” At an unspecified earlier date, the congregation had also removed the church’s spire due to its “unsafe condition,” the Historical Commission noted in its nomination, leaving just a two-story stump in its place.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, 19th Street Baptist Church filed a pair of lawsuits against St. Peter’s, alleging that the will of original benefactor, Margaretta Lewis, had left a financial endowment to pay for the church’s upkeep in perpetuity, but that St. Peter’s had concealed its existence and kept the money at the time of sale.

The claim, chronicled most authoritatively in a 2000 Daily News piece entitled “Holy War,” was ultimately unsuccessful, first dismissed by a Philadelphia Common Pleas judge and later in federal court. The article noted 19th Street Baptist Church’s former, charismatic pastor Reverend Charles Walker and attorney Robert Sugarman claimed an original trust of $80,000 could have been worth upward of $100 million by 2000, which would have been far more than enough to pay for several hundred thousand dollars in repairs Reverend Walker said the church needed at that time. However, lawyers for St. Peter’s denied the merits of the case and also claimed that remaining trust monies were nowhere near the amount the church was seeking. “Documentation about the trust’s value is scarce, but [a court order] of Sept. 9, 1945 listed a balance of principal at $22,763.84,” the Daily News reported at the time.

More than two decades later, the wound remains open. The Daily News article recalled how an aide to Walker had searched City records and found the will of Lewis, which set off the legal action. Winborne said that aide was him. “Look at her will. You will see the language in the will where the trust that she had for the church was to be connected to the building,” said Winborne.

Salvation Efforts Fall Short

The deterioration of the church appeared to accelerate following the failed lawsuits. By the end of the 2000s, 19th Street Baptist Church had moved its services from the sanctuary to the Sunday school building, which the congregation now refers to as a fellowship hall. In 2011, L&I deemed the church officially unsafe and put fencing around the exterior of the premises after an earthquake shook loose stucco from its facade, according to an article by Ashley Hahn for Plan Philly. Preservation experts add that serpentine stone is notoriously difficult to maintain, due to a chemical makeup that leaves it vulnerable to erosion, particularly from acid rain.

Hahn also chronicled subsequent efforts to then “save” the building, in which preservationists such as Wunsch and the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia worked to secure a few thousands dollars in emergency funding. With the money for supplies in hand and a capable carpenter in the church’s deacon Lloyd Butler, Wunsch wrote in his 2012 Hidden City piece that emergency repairs were performed including the replacement of wooden beams in the sanctuary and installation of corrugated metal roofs to keep out the elements.

The efforts to stabilize the church’s condition led to a hopeful reprieve, but were set back by subsequent developments. Squire said he understands that 19th Street Baptist Church took out a sizable loan, which current debt holder PNL Companies dates to 2012, to help make repairs to the church. A 2015 WHYY article chronicling ongoing efforts to repair the church noted that congregants had raised $50,000 for further repairs, but made no mention of such a loan.

Phil Cook, current trustee of 19th Street Baptist Church, said there was some “discrepancy” around the repair loan, including a dispute between the church and a contractor hired to perform work, and a dispute over “the distribution of funds from the bank to the contractor,” and litigation ensued.

At some point, the church fell behind on the debt and it was sold to PNL, a Dallas-based firm specializing in purchasing distressed commercial mortgages. In a written statement, PNL partner Dan Levitan confirmed PNL currently holds the debt, but said he worked closely with the church’s leadership, as well as benefactor and former Philadelphia Mayor Reverend Dr. W. Wilson Goode Sr., to try and preserve the church’s existence.

“[Goode] told me that on the death bed of his friend, the long-time [Pastor Walker], that he would look after the church’s welfare. I assured Dr. Goode that our company’s intentions were to work with the church,” Levitan said.

As Levitan tells it, this led PNL to make several concessions, including an extension of the loan’s maturity date and modification of its terms “to give the church sufficient time to raise the funds to save this historically significant Point Breeze building.”

Specifically, Levitan said PNL agreed to forgive half of an existing balance of $564,000 if the church agreed to use the freed up resources to repair the church. Yet, an agreement for the arrangement also included a clause that stipulated the church could not sell the building to a for-profit developer for a 1o-year period or would have to pay back the full balance.

Levitan said nine months after the deal was inked, articles appeared in the Philadelphia press stating the church was looking to sell the building to a preservation-minded buyer, with Winborne remarking to The Inquirer that other South Philadelphia churches had sold for upwards of $2 million.

“Clearly, PNL would never have consented to write off $281,774.05 of the loan balance had we known the church intended to sell the property for a large profit and relocate from Point Breeze,” Levitan said. “We notified the church leaders in writing of our concerns, but never received a response.”

Winborne, who left 19th Street Baptist Church to lead a different congregation in New Jersey for 17 years before returning as lead pastor in 2014, admits the church could have better handled its past finances. He says former Reverend Walker wore many hats, including missionary, and thus dispensed of some resources elsewhere. He said he was personally taken aback by the deterioration of the building upon his return to the congregation.

“There were times when he took the resources that should have gone for, in my opinion, some maintenance,” Winborne said. “It went to somebody else who was in a worse off situation than we were.”

Winborne also pointed to societal-level issues. There is the church’s insistence that it was shorn of its rightful financial endowment in a pre-Civil Rights America. There is also the modern continuation of inequality in which Black communities hold less resources and struggle to access financing he said. “We’re not in the circles. We don’t have the skill set. We don’t have anybody who’s a multimillionaire. We don’t know the lawyers. We don’t know the people to put a deal together,” said Winborne.

He also showed no penchant for hiding his disdain for PNL, writing in a recent newsletter to church members that 19th Street Baptist Church still had “the claws of the vulture capitalist on our side.” “In a sea of gentrification and an ocean of buildings we have come up empty,” he added.

Squire, who said he has been involved in years-long efforts to find a new source of capital large enough to save the church, attests that numerous applications to find philanthropic support were declined, which, he explained, is a common challenge for churches of all denominations. However, Squire said he did identify a potential lender in a “faith-based,” Black-owned firm called Crossing Capital, and also approached Ian Smith, a Black, Philadelphia-based architect to mock up some adaptive reuse options. Essentially, Squire said he had been trying for one last push to spare the church from demolition, including potentially selling the building to an adaptive reuse developer and paying off the full PNL debt with the proceeds.

Yet, he claims 19th Street Baptist Church took an “astonishingly long time” to do their part of the paperwork and seemed intent on minimizing PNL’s financial take. “There’s a lot of animus between the church and the lender, or the debt-holder, that seems to be deeply personal,” Squire said. “They just were not interested in any scenario where [PNL] got paid back. And, at the end of the day, that was the kind of fundamental sticking point on all deals.”

Demolition Pending, Perhaps Imminently

Exactly when the wrecking ball might arrive at 19th Street Baptist Church is somewhat unclear and potentially malleable. Squire said a date of Monday, September 16th had been privately conveyed by the City. Asked to confirm, Shemeka Moore, a spokesperson for L&I, suggested via email it could very well be the case.

“Yes, this property is on the imminently dangerous list and could be demolished in the interest of public safety,” Moore wrote. “However, the owner still has time to get permits and start repairs. This would stop the property from being demolished.”

A focus appears to be on the adjacent fellowship hall, which both Winborne and Squire said is in better condition than the sanctuary and may be able to be salvaged. However, the two are structurally connected and thus the City has requested engineering work to investigate.

“We’re waiting for the engineer’s report to give it to the City, so they know exactly what to shore up,” Winborne said, adding he expects the City could potentially wait as long as the end of fall before performing demolition. “[The engineer] understands the urgency and the hope is very, very soon.”

Cook, the church’s trustee, also pushed back on the notion that the church has let its buildings reach the brink of demolition out of spite for PNL. “The hope is we get a partner,” to save at least the fellowship hall, Cook said. “Hopefully it’s a nonprofit partner, but if it’s a for-profit partner, then, you know, the church is obligated to pay its debt. We’re not trying to shy away from any of that.”

At the same time, Winborne hinted a new chapter may be in store for the parcel, noting he’d spoken with politicians who expressed a general need for land in South Philadelphia for new developments like senior centers.

“When you look at the size of the footprint when the main sanctuary comes down, my question is, where is there another parcel of land that large in Center City South?” Winborne posited. “Paul says in Romans, ‘All things work together for the good, for those that love God.’ So I’m an eternal optimist. There is opportunities for good.”

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Editor’s note: Thaddeus Squire is a founder of Hidden City Philadelphia, but retains no professional position with this publication.

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