Modern gospel music was born right here, on the corner in front of you. The building here was designed in 1890 by Adler and Sullivan, the great architectural firm, originally as a synagogue, and later became Pilgrim Baptist Church. In the 1930s its music director was Thomas A. Dorsey, a former blues pianist who fused the rhythms and feeling of the blues with sacred lyrics, creating the modern gospel sound.
From this congregation that new music spread across Black churches nationwide; Dorsey wrote Take My Hand, Precious Lord here, and the young Mahalia Jackson sang in this neighborhood's churches. Tragically the historic building was gutted by fire in 2006, and only its stone walls remain. Look at the surviving masonry, a Louis Sullivan design and a cradle of gospel both, and consider that a sound now heard in churches around the world first rose from this corner of Bronzeville.