On March 28 of this year, a fire destroyed the former Pentecostal Determine Church of God in the Union-Miles Park neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.
On March 28 of this year, a fire destroyed the former Pentecostal Determine Church of God in the Union-Miles Park neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio.
Historically, the building was home to the Miles Park United Methodist congregation, founded by Lyman Ferris in 1832 in Newburgh Township. The congregation initially met in a farmhouse near Harvard Avenue and East 71st Street before relocating to Newburgh’s town hall. In 1841, the church received a plot of land at Miles Park Avenue and present-day East 91st Street from Theodore Miles’s estate. This location became the site for a new frame church in 1850.
As the steel industry expanded in the neighborhood during the 1850s, the congregation’s size grew. The original church was moved to East 92nd Street and Walker Avenue in 1872 to make room for a larger church building. A new building for Miles Park United Methodist Church was constructed between 1872 and 1883 in the Gothic Revival architectural style. The church lost its 85-foot-high steeple to a fire in 1925, and the interior was renovated with more contemporary designs in 1937. Despite these changes, the church building remained part of the Miles Park Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Union-Miles Park began to decline in the 1960s due to broader shifts in urban development and economic challenges. The Miles Park Methodist Church congregation disbanded in 1978, and the church building was sold to the predominantly African-American congregation of Allen Chapel-Missionary Baptist Church in 1979. Later, the church was sold to the Pentecostal Determine Church of God congregation. In 2020, the closed church’s roof failed, causing the congregation to relocate.
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Add Yours →Lapsed Clevelander here, feeling helpless. It seems that some of the city may be coming back to life, but I grieve for its former self.
Looks like it was a beautiful church at one time. Was there two separate fires? Appears to have photos of the church with rafters (no roof) and stained glass. Then some photos showing it completely gutted. Thanks for sharing, I’m sure it’ll be missed by many in the community.
The final sentence of the article mentions that the “roof failed” in 2020. I assume the photos with the rafters intact were taken after 2020, and prior to the devistating fire.
I grieve for Cleveland. It was pretty far along in the 1960’s, but I didn’t expect an empty Downtown, nor the sort of destruction seen here. It looks, however, that a few sane people have taken a degree of control, but I don’t think they can deal with the race problem.