A Notes for Peace concert, presented by the Negaunee Music Institute, brings families to the Epiphany Center for the Arts.
Todd Rosenberg Photography
Through creative reuse, developers and husband-and-wife team David Chase and Kimberly Rachal turned a former 1885 Episcopal church on Chicago’s West Side into a center for visual, performing and culinary arts. Constructed in 1885, the church was designed by architects Edward Burling and Francis Whitehouse and added in 1998 to the National Register of Historic Places.
Chase and Rachal adapted the former church’s interior, exterior and its 1953 parish building to create the Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S. Ashland Ave. The 42,000 square-foot campus, which is 100 percent ADA accessible, now houses a collection of eight art galleries, three resident artist studios and Studio 4 (a space dedicated to classes, workshops and lectures), along with four performing arts and three event spaces. The renovation won a 2021 Landmarks Illinois Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award for Adaptive Reuse.
Epiphany’s inclusive programming aims to unite community and artists alike while “Bringing Chicago Together.”
Chamber music groups from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have performed at Epiphany, and events produced by the CSO’s Negaunee Music Institute have been presented there as well. Audire Music, featuring CSO musicians Rong-Yan Tang and Jasmine Mengjia Lin (violins),Youming Chen (viola), Olivia Jakyoung Huh (cello) and Alexander Horton (bass), will appear there Dec. 6 (tickets become available Nov. 20).
Serving Chicago’s diverse communities, the center is devoted to creating “an artistic cultural experience in all patrons who cross its threshold, with the hope that each will be inspired to realize their own Epiphany.” The center exists, as its mission states, “For the Good of Art, Entertainment and Events.”
The project is personal for Chase and Rachal, who were married at the former church in 1996. That same year, they purchased a building across the street from the church. This connection to the building and neighborhood then inspired the couple to purchase the church when it went on the market in 2017, six years after the last services were held in the building.
When the couple moved into third-floor loft of the building across the street, “We had no way of knowing the significant role the Church of the Epiphany would play in our lives,” Chase said. “We were new neighbors making friends with residents of the historic Jackson Boulevard District that included the Victorian homes on the south side of Adams Street. The Church of the Epiphany, with its Richardsonian Romanesque architecture and magnificent bells, became our landmark. We fell in love with the old building and its members, some of whom have become lifelong friends.”
Chase calls the growth and awareness of Epiphany Arts Center organic. "In many ways, we feel the presence of a spirit,” Chase told the South Side Weekly. ”In your life, when you feel that wind start pushing on your back a little bit, you know, most of us are running into the wind, facing the wind, and fighting in life — but try to sense the wind when it’s at your back, and when you feel it, just go with it. And it will be amazing where that can take you. So feel the wind!”
