With dwindling numbers, historic Mormon church closes a NW Side congregation

A Mormon church with more than 100 years of history on Chicago’s Northwest Side is disbanding in part.

Known as the Logan Square Ward, the Mormon congregation has had English- and Spanish-speaking components, and the English-language group was shut down in October because of declining membership. The Spanish-language group remains.

The news site Block Club Chicago noted the Logan Square congregation was reportedly “one of the first Mormon churches to be built east of the Mississippi” after Mormons left downstate Nauvoo for Utah “after being so severely persecuted by mobs in 1846.”

While the congregation was started over a century ago, it’s been at its current location in the 3200 block of West Wrightwood Avenue since the 1980s.

There are still a number of other congregations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — the Mormon church’s formal name — in the Chicago area.

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