This is really sad:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Fire destroyed Chicago's 116-year-old Pilgrim Baptist Church on Friday, a historic structure that was built as a synagogue and became known as the birthplace of American gospel music.

Towering flames collapsed the peaked wooden roof and brick columns of the 1890 church designed by architects Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler.

There were no immediate reports of the cause of the fire or of any injuries, fire department officials said.

"Pilgrim was such an outstanding building with an important history, not only for Chicago but for the country as the birthplace of American gospel," said Tuomi Forrest, associate director of the group Partners for Sacred Places.

The synagogue, initially run by Adler's father, a rabbi, was converted into a church in the 1920s as the Jewish population migrated elsewhere. It became an anchor of the once-thriving Bronzeville neighborhood for Chicago's growing black population.

Thomas A. Dorsey, the son of a Baptist minister and a church organist, became the church's music director, melding blues with sacred hymns into gospel music.

His choir featured such stars as Mahalia Jackson, James Cleveland and Sally Martin. Among Dorsey's many compositions performed at the church were "Take My Hand, Precious Lord."

Many objected to Dorsey's music as overly secular. "I've been thrown out of some of the best churches in America," the widely-regarded father of gospel music once said.

Before the fire, the Partners for Sacred Places had helped raise some money to repair the church, which Forrest said needed nearly $3 million to restore a deteriorating roof, cornices, downspouts and electric system. Water had seeped inside the structure and destroyed molding.


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