In 1969, at the height of the civil rights era, Philadelphia’s Zion Baptist Church burned down.
Established in the late 19th century, it was the oldest African American congregation in North Philadelphia.
Zion’s leader, the prominent civil rights activist Rev. Leon Sullivan, hired an African American architect—activist Walter Livingston Jr.—and a Black-owned construction company and got right to work to build it again.
The new, modernist building had a roof with a mountain peak, and a wall of windows that filled the sanctuary with blue, red, and yellow light.
Photo: Tema Nicole Stauffer
After fire demolished the original building, Sullivan promised his congregants that the church would “rise like a phoenix from the ashes.”
Mike Major, an associate minister at Zion, grew up just around the corner from the church. He was a child when the fire broke out. The new building became a refuge for him and his family: a daycare, a summer camp, a tutoring hub, and, of course, a place of worship. Zion had risen again just as Sullivan had envisioned.
Now, 55 years later, Zion is going through a second rebirth, this time with the help of Conserving Black Modernism, a grant program funded by the Getty Foundation and managed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as part of its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
Photo: Tema Nicole Stauffer
The interior of Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia
Despite their innovation and experimentation, Black architects are often overlooked and undervalued in the modern architecture movement. The historic and iconic spaces they designed sometimes lack long-term funding or preservation planning.
To address these issues, Conserving Black Modernism has already awarded $1.2 million in grants to eight modern sites across the United States, including Zion Baptist Church. A second year of grants will be announced next month. All of the funding is supporting conservation planning and professional training to protect the buildings and shed light on their stories.
Advancing Economic Equality
“If Martin Luther King is known for human rights and voting rights, I’d say Sullivan was the ‘economic empowerment’ leader of the movement,” says Major.
Rev. Sullivan arrived at Zion in 1950 with experience in community organizing from his time in New York, and immediately began uplifting his church and the surrounding African American community. He organized successful boycotts against Philadelphia businesses that refused to hire Black people, and founded the Opportunities Industrialization Center, a job-training program that expanded to many regions in the United States and even sites in Africa.
Using church donations, he started nonprofit and for-profit entities to support and invest in Black-owned businesses, and created the first Black-owned shopping plaza (Sullivan Progress Plaza) and Black-owned manufacturing companies in the country. He also built housing for seniors and apartment buildings.
In South Africa, he fought apartheid and established Sullivan’s Principles: corporate codes of conduct that were first applied in South Africa and eventually adopted in the US. His work also directly inspired Operation Breadbasket, a national organization championed by Rev. Dr. King, dedicated to promoting economic opportunities for all African Americans.
“Here was a man who walked with kings by this point. He was known globally, but he knew people by name,” recalls Major. “So here I am, this kid from North Philadelphia who could offer him nothing, but he knew me by my name; he called me Major.” On May 2, 1998, Major became the last person licensed to be a minister by Sullivan, who retired just a few weeks later.
Mike Major participates in a discussion during the Conserving Black Modernism workshop held at the Getty Center.
Lessons from the Past
This spring, representatives from the eight sites awarded Conserving Black Modernism grants arrived at the Getty Center to participate in training organized by the Getty Conservation Institute’s Conserving Modern Architecture Initiative. Major, as well as architectural conservator Kate Cowing, who is leading preservation planning for the church, were among the participants.
The four-day workshop included lectures, presentations, panel discussions, a tour of Getty’s Architectural Special Collections, and visits to historic LA sites designed by Black architects. It enhanced the skills of recipients to help them fulfill their grant projects and provided them a chance to meet, interact, and learn from one another.
During one of the presentations, Major learned about “living memory,” a concept that emphasizes the importance of preserving not only physical structures but also the personal narratives associated with them. Major says he remembers Sullivan vividly, and that Zion is a symbol of his legacy.
Mike Major at the Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles
A Community’s Sanctuary
As Philadelphia’s manufacturing industry began to decline in the 1970s, a new need arose in the community: higher education. Major’s parents had moved to Pennsylvania during the Great Migration from the South and, although having a passion for education, neither had graduated from high school. Zion offered the academic support structure needed by many young people in the city.
Major remembers attending Zion’s college counseling program every Saturday during his four years of high school, going on church-sponsored college tours, and deciding on Georgia Tech as his dream school. In addition to serving as a minister, Major is a senior technology business analyst at a Wall Street firm and founder of Called to Serve, a nonprofit focused on revitalizing underserved neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
While he credits his success to the church’s emphasis on a college education, growing up, Zion’s basketball program had the biggest draw for him. In its heyday, around 700 kids joined each year. Some went on to build careers in the sport. Major believes that the church’s gym protected them from nearby gangs. Black churches have historically functioned as a place of support, even as a place of a safety, he says.
Kate Cowing (left) and Mike Major (right) are representing Zion in the Conserving Black Modernism grant program
Half of the places from the first year of Conserving Black Modernism grants are Black Baptist churches. During the workshop, participants visited Second Baptist Church in South LA, the oldest African American church in Southern California. Designed by Black architect Paul R. Williams and considered the “West Coast home” of Rev. Dr. King, it too has strong ties to the civil rights movement.
“For a lot of Black pastors, the church has to be more than just a place of worship,” Major says. “It has to be a place that meets people where they are to help meet their needs—their physical needs, as well as their spiritual needs.”
The Conserving Black Modernism workshop included a tour of Getty’s Architectural Special Collections, where participants looked at the holdings of LA architect Paul Revere Williams, one of the most significant Black architects of the 20th century.
Re-building Zion
Zion is beginning to age. “It’s 50 years old, and things start to fail after that,” says Cowing. “The heating, electric, air-conditioning, plumbing—most of it is 50 years old. Not only are these things starting to fail, but the technology has also evolved since then. If we update the technology, it’s going to save the church a ton of money in heating and electricity.”
The gym, once the hallmark of Zion’s youth programming, is currently closed. Water has leaked onto the floor and damaged it multiple times. The floor and the roof would need to be rebuilt and reinforced. The gym and sanctuary are in the same building, which is not the norm, Major says, but Sullivan used basketball as a hook. He would play the sport with young men and use it as an opportunity invite them to church.
Beyond preserving the physical space, Major hopes to preserve Sullivan’s dream: a prosperous Black community that designed, built, and contributed to American society.
During the Getty workshop, Major and Cowing learned to not just think of practical needs but to consider the values—the why—of their project. “We want to make Zion a place of hope—that’s our overlying value,” he says. “As a church, we also care about people spiritually, so we want people to see that God really loves them. At the end of the day, we want to send a message of love and hope. The building is a tool and a vehicle to bring that to fruition.”
