As a child, Cindy McMahon remembers walking by Greenstone Church in Chicago’s Pullman neighborhood and stopping in to sit and enjoy its splendor. The place became so important to her that she and her husband Tom even chose the historic church for their 1983 wedding ceremony, even though the church is United Methodist and they are Catholic.
But these days the church is in disrepair and has been closed for two years because the gas bill could not be paid and the heat turned off.
So McMahon and the Pullman community, who share her love for the church in Historical Pullman National Park, have banded together to pay the roughly $20,000 bill and reopen the church. They’ve raised $14,000 from a GoFundMe campaign and about $4,000 more from private donations, the Historic Pullman Foundation and the Pullman Civic Organization. Another donation just came in from Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives.
“The church was always very welcoming to the community,” McMahon said recently, noting there are only about 30 parishioners, but many neighbors who are not official members, like she and her husband, consider it their own.
“It’s the community-adopted church,” she said.
McMahon, who is retired from a job at the Illinois Secretary of State’s office, still works full time as a volunteer for community causes — leading fundraising campaigns, co-hosting the Annual Pullman Historic House Tours and acting as treasurer of the Historic Pullman Foundation, where she’s been a board member for years.
A lifelong Pullman resident, McMahon has had plenty of fundraising help for the campaign, including fellow Pullman proponents James Badali and Nino Alfonso, who have been getting the word out on social media.
Badali is a resident and volunteer, and Alfonso grew up in Pullman but now lives in New York, though he still has deep roots in the neighborhood. His father and uncle — the only two remaining rail car workers in the neighborhood — still live there.
Greenstone Church has a central place in Pullman history.
“It’s magnificent,” said Badali.
Industrialist George Pullman knew it played a crucial part in the neighborhood he founded, saying it was built to “complete the scene.”
The church has a 92-foot green steeple, which can be seen throughout the neighborhood and from the nearby Metra station, a circular stained glass rose window, and a huge Steere and Turner organ — one of the few remaining in Chicago. The altar and pews are made from cherry wood. But the lack of heat and fluctuating temperatures have taken a toll on the organ and building.
The community holds meetings in the church along with choir concerts, and a local Boy Scout Troop meets there. There are also dinners held in front of the church to help raise money for it. Those are some of the reasons the community wants to save it.
“This community has always been full of fighters — and this is just the latest chapter,” said Alfonso. “Back in 1960, when the neighborhood was threatened with demolition, hundreds of residents gathered — ironically in the Greenstone Church — to take a stand against developers. And they won.
“That victory paved the way for Pullman to become Chicago’s first National Park. Then in 1975, the community rallied once more to save the Hotel Florence,” said Alfonso. He said that passion was “in our DNA.”
Rodrick Lewis and fellow resident and girlfriend Arlene Echols have donated heavily to the fundraiser. He said he remembers the neighborhood worshiping in front of the church during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was the one safe place they could gather.
“The community recognizes it as always being open,” said Lewis. We look at it as more of a community center and church and even though we’re not Methodist, we all view that church as our church. “It’s just a part of the family,” said Lewis, a retired accountant. “In the summer with the sunlight going through (the rose window), it just looks like a kaleidoscope of colors.”
Janice Neumann is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
