When an urban explorer stumbled across the old, boarded-up church at the corner of 80th and Wood streets, the signs of its neglect and decay piqued his curiosity.
Hidden beyond the broken windows, crumbling drywall and flooded floors were intricate columns, vaulted ceilings and intact stained glass that included the church’s famed flower window.
“It was absolutely stunning,” the explorer said, who requested anonymity to avoid getting busted for trespassing. He found the South Side church in December and posted a video of his exploration on the Instagram page, Decaying Midwest. The post got over 10,000 likes.
The church has been known by many names, but the community remembers it best as the Little Flower Church, a Catholic parish in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood. The limestone-facade church was built over 70 years ago and served worshippers for decades.
“This church was a real mainstay and cornerstone of the community for so long,” said Ward Miller, executive director of Preservation Chicago, an organization that advocates for protecting and revitalizing city architecture and neighborhoods. “It’s really wrenching to see the building not only closed but vacant and vandalized.”
Preservation Chicago, also behind the fight to save St. Adalbert Parish in Pilsen, is at least one group in the city hoping to preserve Little Flower Church and seek landmark status for it.
Ald. David Moore (17th), whose ward includes the church, said he’ll continue supporting any efforts to preserve the building and its history and make it into a resource for the neighborhood.
“I hope we can preserve that history of the Auburn Gresham community with this church,” he said. “We don’t have any place where people can come learn about Auburn Gresham.”
The Archdiocese of Chicago sold the church, formally called St. Therese the Infant Jesus Church, in 1994, and it became the Greater Mount Hebron Missionary Baptist Church, according to records from the Cook County clerk’s office.
But the church has sat empty for at least four years, Miller estimates. County records show it was foreclosed on in 2020, and a Minnesota LLC paid off the building’s mortgage in 2023.
The current and past owners could not be reached for comment.
Preservation Chicago has tried to reach the new owners to figure out their plans. Miller said they bought the church for $100,000. He hopes the new owners decide to invest in the church and convert it into a new space that would benefit the neighborhood.
“This is not beyond salvage; this would be a great building to repurpose, whether it’s a house of worship or whether it’s a community center or housing,” Miller said. “It could offer so much to the Auburn Gresham neighborhood, which has seen a lot of disinvestment.”
Maggi Cole, who lives near Little Flower and has spent her entire life in Auburn Gresham, said some of her family used to attend the church. She said she hopes the church, which used to operate a weekly food pantry, becomes something useful for the community.
“It’s an eyesore to the community in its current condition,” Cole said. “That area lacks community resources, so that building could be used for so much more, like for mental health services, after-school programs, day care.”
Restored to its ‘former glory’
Within the nave of the old Catholic church where parishioners sat, the explorer found that a smaller worship space was built with drywall that hides much of the original church.
“You can see a lot of the detail and beautiful architecture on the original building,” he said. “But the smaller church inside of the church definitely obscured all of the original.”
The neglect is obvious. The basement is moldy and completely flooded — the explorer used plastic crates to walk across the water. In the basement, he found boxes of old canned foods covered in muck, photos and a baptism tub.
Much of that second, smaller worship space was falling apart. In the original part of the church, large sections of paint have chipped off, graffiti covers parts of the walls, and clutter is strewn throughout.
But the signs of a once beautiful church are there. The stained-glass windows, marble pillars, statues and the altar are all intact. Many of the intricate details painted on the towering ceilings remain largely untouched.
The explorer found it tragic that Little Flower has been left to wither.
The church “was obviously very gorgeous at one point, and now there’s no power on, and it’s in a very bad state of disrepair,” he said. “I would really like to see it saved and restored to its original former glory.”
Urban exploration is finding and exploring abandoned structures, often involving trespassing onto private property. The explorer visits anywhere from one to 10 places a week. Some are more sealed up than others and have better security.
Decaying Midwest launched about two years ago and now has 1 million Instagram followers. The explorer has visited abandoned places, including a maximum-security prison, a shopping mall and an underground tunnel system, and has shared photos and videos of the structures on social media.
A key part of the activity is documenting the spaces as a part of preserving their history, the explorer said.
“Without people doing urban exploration, there would be so many places that go unphotographed, undocumented,” he said. “And just one day they get demolished, and it’s like that place barely even existed.”
