Black cultural events coming to 2nd Church of Christ, Scientist – Evanston RoundTable

Steven Rogers purchased a church: He’s the brand new proprietor of the 2nd Church of Christ, Scientist, in north Evanston.

The congregation, which had seen its numbers drop, might now not afford to keep the constructing at 2715 Hurd Ave., so it provided it on the market in hopes of discovering a smaller place nonetheless in Evanston.

The church sits throughout from Willard Elementary School however fronts on Park Place. It was begun in 1930 and completed in 1947, slowed by debt and supplies shortages throughout WWII. The surrounding neighborhood is residential, apart from the varsity and church.

Rogers was first fascinated by shopping for solely the car parking zone, as soon as the location of a brief road (Bauer Place) of 5 homes owned by Black households. The households had been forcibly eliminated “sometime around” 1927, and their homes moved to the fifth Ward. Rogers, outraged by that historical past, hoped to create some form of memorial backyard there.

But the car parking zone was not accessible with out the church, so Rogers purchased the church with the concept of utilizing the property to profit the Black group by some means. Calling himself a philanthropist and investor, he says, “I’m at the stage where I can do things.” He admits this buy was pushed by emotion.

A lover of the humanities, Rogers desires to enhance the standard of life within the speedy neighborhood, present alternative to younger Black folks and uplift the poor Black group. So he’s providing the use of the constructing’s lovely 235 seat auditorium, hire-free, to Black artists of all genres, whereas “always respecting the edifice.”

This previous weekend noticed a rousing, bought-out live performance by the Jubilee Singers, the choir from Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn. The occasion was sponsored by the Sherman Methodist Church on Ridge Ave. The choir carried out to a overflow crowd Friday night the 20th. Rogers mentioned, with emphasis, that the auditorium “had never heard anything like that before.”

On Oct. 10 and 23, Donovan Mixon introduced his free “garage concert” to the stage on the church, and can proceed to accomplish that month-to-month all year long, Mixon confirmed. In heat climate, he and his musician mates carry out out of his storage/studio within the alley between Cleveland Street and Monroe Street in Evanston.