National Museum of Gospel Music

Project Details

Project Description

Wight & Company has designed the nation’s first gospel museum, which will rise within the limestone shell of Pilgrim Baptist Church, the birthplace of gospel music. Ravaged by fire in 2006, the building was designed by Louis Sullivan and opened its doors in 1891. It was during the 1930s that the church became known as the birthplace of gospel.

Dirk Lohan created the design for the new museum in Chicago’s historic Bronzeville neighborhood, which is also home to the Mies van der Rohe-designed campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech). While a young architecture student at Illinois Tech, Lohan would visit Pilgrim Baptist to listen to the music. Renowned singers such as Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin performed there.

Lohan’s history with this special place provided the inspiration for his design, which blends the old with the new. It emerged as part of an exhibition that invited architects to re-imagine the future for neglected and overlooked buildings in Chicago’s neighborhoods. His steel-structured “building within a building” design simultaneously braces Pilgrim Baptist’s surviving exterior walls and supports a roof outfitted with an array of solar panels. Space between the old exterior walls and the new interior ones will allow the historic limestone walls of Louis Sullivan’s masterpiece to be viewed from within the landmarked building.

The museum will house exhibit and event space, including a 350-seat auditorium. It will include a research and listening library, café and retail store. It will also be home to the archives of the Stellar Gospel Music Awards, the first and oldest televised awards show honoring gospel greats. Reinventing the charred remains will help revitalize the neighborhood and return the building to an important place of culture, worship, community and tourism.