Earlier this week, a fire ravaged the former Church of the Redemption at 9-17 N. 56th St. and an inspector from L&I quickly determined that building was imminently dangerous, with all sorts of problems with the roofing, walls, and the ceiling. This morning, we noticed that a demolition permit was issued for this building, ending its story after more than a century.
The original Church of the Redemption was located at 22nd & Callowhill Street, but the Episcopal congregation later merged with several others to form a single, large parish in West Philadelphia. Taking over a location just north of 56th & Market from the St. Anna’s Mission House, the congregation would lay the cornerstone for the English Gothic style church in 1913. The congregation seemingly thrived, offering up multiple services every Sunday.
But disaster struck in 1955 when a teenager set the church on fire in an attempt to profit from selling scrap metal. According to the Inquirer coverage, the fire cracked the stained glass window and destroyed vestments and sacred vessels. Rejecting overtures to merge with a nearby congregation, the Church of the Redemption moved to Bucks County after the fire. Photos of the building reveal a gutted out structure, but Greater White Rock Baptist Church saw an opportunity, taking over the building in 1957. They maintained ownership for decades, ultimately selling the property to developers in 2020.
It’s not clear whether these developers had a plan for the property when they bought it, but they quickly flipped it to another developer in 2022. We don’t see any permits for the property over the last few years, so perhaps these purchases were simply efforts to land bank, in the hopes that the area would gentrify in the coming years. Though the church was quite stately, it was not listed on the local Historic Register, so the developers could have demolished the building if they were so inclined, ahead of any possible redevelopment. This was probably a selling point for the developers, as a renovation would have been very tricky, financially. It’s a little surprising that nobody ever nominated the building to the be designated historic, as it’s a great example of a design from the locally renowned architectural firm of Heacock & Hokanson. It’s moot now though, as the church is nearly gone.
With the church now almost totally demolished, all we can do now is look toward the future. The 22K sqft property is zoned CMX-3, which would allow a sizable project with significant density and some decent height. There’s MFL station only a few feet away, and the property sits in a Transit-Oriented Development Overlay District, which loosens up some zoning regulations and reduces parking minimums. On the other side of the ledger, the property sits within the Mixed-Income Neighborhoods Overlay District, and the Fourth District Overlay District, both of which add restrictions to any possible redevelopment. Add in the fact that the path of market rate development stops several blocks to the east and might never stretch this far west, and the chances of a major project here anytime soon start to feel rather remote.
We’re quite bummed to see this terrific building meet its end, and we’re even more upset that it seems likely that this site will remain vacant for quite some time. That being said, we’ve been wrong in the past when we’ve tried to prognosticate about this sort of thing, and we’d be positively tickled if that’s the case here.