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Bishop Louis Henry Ford, Namesake Of Freeway And Eulogist At Emmett Till’s Funeral, Was Chicago’s 1st Historic Preservationist

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SOUTH LOOP — Chicagoans familiar with the local highway system have undoubtedly heard of the Bishop Ford Freeway, a stretch of Interstate 94 from Interstate 57 to 170th street in South Holland.

Originally known as the Calumet Expressway, the highway was renamed for Bishop Louis Henry Ford in 1996. Ford was well-known as the presiding bishop of the 8.5 million member Church of God in Christ and eulogist at Emmett Till’s funeral.

He was considerably less well-known for being Chicago’s first historic preservationist.

In 1941, Bishop Ford purchased Chicago’s oldest-surviving building. Built in 1836 and known as the “Widow Clarke House,” it was then at 4526 S. Wabash Ave. in Grand Boulevard. He began a nearly four decade effort to preserve the home, fundraise for its upkeep and advocate for its importance.

The work of Bishop Ford, the Ford family and the St. Paul Church of God in Christ led to the house’s designation as a Chicago landmark and the transformation of the Clarke House into a city-run museum showing what life was like when much of Chicago was wild Midwest prairie.

“The Clarke House was purchased during a period when redlining had not become the ‘banner’ of blocking Black people from owning property,” said Kevin Anthony Ford, Bishop Ford’s grandson and third-generation pastor at the St. Paul Church of God in Christ. “My grandfather made history by buying Chicago’s oldest house in 1941.”

The Henry B. Clarke House was built for hardware merchant Henry B. Clarke and was originally at 16th Street and Michigan Avenue. After Clarke’s death in 1849, his widow lived in the home until 1872, when it was sold to John Chrimes.

Fearing a repetition of the Great Chicago Fire, Chrimes moved the home to 4526 S. Wabash Ave., far from the city center. The house was later sold to Chrimes’ daughter and her husband, William H. Walter.

The Chrimes/Walter descendants lived in the house through the early 20th century. In 1935, the Clarke House was extensively measured and photographed for the Historic American Buildings Survey, a jobs program created to create work for photographers and draftsmen unemployed during the Great Depression.

Bishop Ford began his ministry in the cotton fields of Lexington, Mississippi, before moving to Chicago in 1933. Preaching on the corner of 47th and Dearborn streets, Bishop Ford would walk by the Clarke House daily, then painted an olive green. He felt called by God to make the house the future home of the church he was growing.

“When you look at the Widow B. Clarke House — known as the Ford House to me — when you look at the people from the inception of transfer, it wasn’t an inanimate object,” Ford said. “It was a love place.”

The Chicago Defender covered the purchase of the Clarke House in November 1941 with a piece titled “Oldest house passes into hands of race” that detailed a gathering of church members, neighbors, relatives of the previous owners and members of the Chicago Historical Society, with a tour given by Lydia Walker and architect Earl H. Reed, who spoke on the house’s Greek Revival architecture.

In 1943, Bishop Ford, then a reverend, moved his wife Margaret, son Charles and daughter Janet into the house, joining tenants already residing there.

In 1948, Bishop and Margaret Ford began interior renovations to the house in earnest, caring for its ornamental marble fireplaces and Georgia pine pocket doors, while also making it a home for those moving to Chicago from the South, including Bishop Ford’s father, who occupied a room when he moved to Chicago from Clarksdale, Mississippi to work in the Stockyards. As the St. Paul Church of God in Christ grew, the uses for each room within the house were adapted, making space for community ministries, church services, equipment to print church bulletins, and further adjusting to fit the needs of the Ford Family as it grew.

In the late 1940s Margaret, a trained cook, opened Chicago’s Oldest House Dining Room, which served lunch weekdays.

In 1951, the St. Paul Church of God in Christ hosted its first birthday celebration for “Chicago’s Oldest House” to raise funds for restoration. The celebration included music, food and church members dressing in 1850s costumes serving tea, and was held in the backyard of the house, which was landscaped and open for use to the neighborhood.

“What caught my attention was the love that my grandfather lavished on the house,” Ford said. “He always had a keen insight on what should be preserved.”

In 1955, an executive with Sears Roebuck and Co. donated exterior paint, and the house was painted white. Birthday teas were held on the property each year, with each generating funds for the upkeep of Clarke House and boasting attendance by senators, congressmen and mayors. Bishop Ford made it a priority to hire Black professionals to complete all skilled and non-skilled labor at the home, from carpenters to masons.

“The house brought a sense of belonging and it became so normal to see something so well maintained that the whole block reflected that image,” Ford siad. “Kids could jump rope and play jacks in front of Chicago’s oldest house.”

In August 1955, Bishop Ford and Bishop Isaiah L. Roberts of the Robert’s Temple Church of God in Christ comforted Mamie Till Mobley as she collapsed after viewing the casket containing her son Emmett Till’s body after it arrived at Illinois Central Station from Money, Mississippi.

Bishop Ford gave the eulogy at Emmett Till’s funeral at the Robert’s Temple Church of God in Christ. Emmett and his mother were members of the church and worshipped at Robert’s Temple.

As government-funded demolition cleared the way for the Dan Ryan Expressway and the Robert Taylor Homes, a few blocks west of the St. Paul Church of God in Christ, Bishop Ford continued to bring attention to the Clarke house as the neighborhood changed all around it.

During the 126th anniversary celebration in 1962, he was interviewed in the Chicago Tribune: “Chicago has often been referred to as the city which doesn’t have a place for landmarks. We will continue to fight off demands to tear down this building because we feel it deserves a place in Chicago on an equal footing with the Water Tower.” He looked to the future of the programming and stewardship of the Clarke House. “I hope the citizens of Chicago will help us relocate the building to its original site at 16th Street and Michigan Avenue, complete with a park and museum.”

“No one dared to challenge the Water Tower’s relevance in Chicago,” Ford said. “The church continually explored new opportunities for the Clarke House, like the annual teas, to keep it relevant in the city of Chicago’s eyes.”

The work to care and maintain the Clarke House by Bishop Ford and the St. Paul Church of God in Christ with a vision for its preservation occurred decades before any other actions to preserve historic buildings in Chicago, via movement or ordinance. The Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural landmarks was not created until 1957, leading the way to the 1968 Chicago Landmarks Ordinance, which granted the commission the responsibility of recommending to City Council which historic landmarks in Chicago should be protected by law.

The work to save and maintain Clarke House predates the organized protest to save Louis Sullivan’s Garrick Theatre, demolished in 1961, as well as the effort by architects to save the Glessner House, designed by H.H. Richardson in, 1966. The National Historic Preservation Act, which created official standards for preservation and established the National Register of Historic Places, wasn’t enacted until 1966.

“It was the Ford family that illuminated the Clarke House,” said Ford who refers to the Clarke House by the pronouns “she and “her.”

“The beauty is how she was loved, cared for and maintained. What she did for the people.”

By 1969, Bishop Ford’s advocacy work on Clarke House had attracted the attention of then-Mayor Richard J. Daley, who attended the birthday celebration. Bishop Ford was interviewed for a piece in the Chicago Tribune: “Who’d believe, up on the north shore and such places, that here, in the heart of the ghetto, grass is growing all around, and flowers. So many people think the Black community is supposed to destroy everything…Destroy everything? Here we have preserved the oldest house. This is our message.”

In October 1970, Clarke House became one of the first buildings to gain local landmark status in Chicago, and conversations began in earnest regarding the future of the house, with Bishop Ford’s vision to move the house closer to Downtown becoming a reality. The Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks was put to task to study how the house could be moved, but also worked to trace members of the Clarke family, who had been obscured after the Great Chicago Fire.

By 1974, the city of Chicago had stated its intent to buy the Clarke House and move it to a new historic district in the vicinity of Prairie Avenue and 18th Street, an area occupied by turn-of-the-20th-century mansions and the newly landmarked Glessner House. The Illinois chapter of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, an organization composed of women who are descendants of an ancestor who resided in one of the original thirteen American colonies before 1776, signed on to furnish the house after its relocation and restoration in the style of the mid 19th century, when the Clarke family occupied the home.

Bishop Ford had an ask for the city as it proceeded with the plans for the Clarke House, telling the Chicago Defender in 1973, “Our guidelines specifically ask that a complete segment of Negro arts and culture occupy a prominent section within the renovated structure. Black culture must be a factor in the move since a black man was the first person to erect a home on Chicago’s site.”

In 1977, the Clarke House was bought by the city for $250,000. Using a 64-wheel trailer and 1.5-ton truck, the house left the care of the St. Paul Church of God in Christ and traveled north, moving at grade until it reached the “L” structure at 44th Street. It was then hoisted up over the tracks using jacks and support cribbing. A cold snap required the Clarke House to hang in mid-air for a week before it moved to its permanent location at 16th Street and Prairie Avenue, in the center of a garden next to the Glessner House.

After the renovations were completed and the rooms were filled with 1850s furnishings, the city opened the Clarke House Museum in June 1982. Neither Bishop Ford nor the St. Paul Church of God in Christ were invited to the official proceedings, as the Chicago Defender noted at the time. Bishop Ford was later added to the program.

Bishop Ford’s request for the Clarke House to help tell the story of Black achievement in Chicago was also never fully realized. Instead, the history of the Ford family’s stewardship of the house is relegated to one panel in the basement gallery, within a room where Margaret Ford once served fried chicken and strawberry shortcake when she ran Chicago’s Oldest House Dining Room.

“I can just imagine how that must have felt to my grandfather … the love and care that was given to the building, sold to the city of Chicago, and then the obfuscation of its history began immediately,” Ford said. “When the building opened up for tours, I was one of the first ones to go through the building. I had to stop the tour because there was no mention of the Ford family. The tour guide said, ‘Well, this tour is about what makes this house historic.’ I grew up in this house. I slid down the bannister. The cupola was our clubhouse. That was a place we played.”

The St. Paul Church of God in Christ continued work in the spirit of their care of Clarke House.

“My grandfather honed that love, that skill for preservation,” Ford said. “He would travel this country helping pastors to help preserve their churches so that spirit of preservation and uplift so that folks would start to appreciate their buildings and their surroundings — he did that everywhere he went.”

That love was also honed at home in Chicago, even after Bishop Ford’s death in 1995. Following in the spirit of using Black skilled labor to restore and maintain Clarke House, Bishop Louis Henry Ford’s son (and Kevin Anthony Ford’s father), Bishop Charles Mason Ford, began a construction apprenticeship program to assist plumbers, roofers and electricians in joining unions. Margaret Ford Manor was constructed in 1997, providing supportive housing for the elderly just north of the church.

While the home sits on a modern foundation at 18th Street and Prairie Avenue, original foundation bricks of the Clarke House line the walls of the contemporary buildings that house the St. Paul Church of God in Christ.

Despite the move, “Clarke house is still here,” Ford said.

With the recent designation of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley Home as a Chicago Landmark, and the push to establish Robert’s Temple Church of God in Christ as a National Monument, the importance of Bishop Ford’s role in saving Clarke House but also launching the grassroots historic preservation movement in Chicago becomes vital to telling the full story of not only what becomes a landmark, but who worked to keep buildings around long enough for them to get there.

“Skipping the importance of Bishop Ford further divides the city,” said urban historian Dilla Thomas, who uses TikTok as a platform to share unexplored stories of Chicago’s past. “Joseph Hudlin was a janitor at the Board of Trade, and as the Great Chicago Fire was raging, he ran up into the fire and saved all of the records he could. African Americans have always played a role in saving Chicago history. Bishop Ford did the same thing for ‘Chicago’s Oldest House.’”

“She [Clarke House] is a story of resurrection, patience and growth,” Ford said. “It’s shameful what people did to hide her history. Now we go in, open the doors again, lets revisit the oldest house in Chicago.”

Elizabeth Blasius is a Chicago-based architectural historian and co-founder of Preservation Futures. She is the former midwest editor of The Architect’s Newspaper, and has had her writing on architecture and historic preservation published in The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, and Bloomberg CityLab.

Check out more of Colin Boyles photos of the Clarke House:

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Twitter @blaservations More by Elizabeth Blasius

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Bishop Louis Henry Ford; Head of Church of God in Christ

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Bishop Louis Henry Ford, 81, leader of the 8.5-million-member Church of God in Christ. Ford began preaching in the countryside around Lexington, Miss., while attending college there in the early 1930s. He moved to Chicago in 1933 and preached on the street until founding St. Paul’s in Chicago in 1935. Ford became bishop of Illinois in 1954 and in 1990 he was elected presiding bishop and chief executive of his Protestant denomination, headquartered in Memphis, Tenn. He was also active in the civil rights movement. “We stay in the grass roots and do not run from ourselves,” he once said to explain the rapid growth of his parish. In Chicago on Friday.

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Bishop Louis Henry Ford, March 14, 1992

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Bishop Ford/Christ Temple

This is a recording of a worship service. In this service Bishop Louis Henry Ford delivers a sermon. The recording begins with Bishop Ford giving honor to Bishop Dell. His sermon is from Matthew. He discusses C.L Franklin. He talks about how C.L. Franklin was full of dope and his death was related to drugs. The recording also includes another sermon by an unidentified man. The sermon is about leprosy and healing.

African American Pentecostals Sermons Religious broadcasting

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http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12322/fa:118

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http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12322/auc.118:0552

The Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library acknowledges the generous support of the National Endowment for Humanities - Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Implementation Project Grant in supporting the processing and digitization of a number of its major archival collections as part of the project: Spreading the Word: Expanding Access to African American Religious Archival Collections at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library.

All works in this collection either are protected by copyright or are the property of the Robert W. Woodruff Library, and/or the copyright holder as appropriate. To order a reproduction or to inquire about permission to publish, please contact the Archives Research Center at: [email protected] with the web URL or handle identification number.

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Image / Louis Henry Ford & an unidentified man at the pulpit, COGIC, Memphis

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Chicago’s oldest house gets a new name and a renewed mission

The new title, clarke-ford home, corrects the record to show a black religious leader’s critical involvement in saving and preserving the city’s oldest home..

The Clarke House Museum at 1827 S. Indiana is a Greek Revival house considered Chicago’s oldest house. It was built in 1836.

Sun-Times files

A city-owned Greek Revival house that’s considered Chicago’s oldest home most likely wouldn’t exist today were it not for an influential South Side pastor.

But the story of how the late Bishop Louis Henry Ford, pastor of St. Paul Church of God in Christ, saved the 186-year-old Henry B. Clarke House and helped facilitate its 1977 relocation to its current (and near-original) site at 1827 S. Indiana Ave., was too often relegated to the back seats of history whenever the noted home was discussed.

Until now, that is.

The City Council last week rightfully voted to change the name of Chicago’s oldest landmark from the Henry B. Clarke House to the Henry B. and Caroline Clarke/Bishop Louis Henry and Margaret Ford House.

The new title is no doubt a mouthful — it’ll be called the “Clarke-Ford House” for short — but the moniker corrects the record to show Ford’s critical involvement in saving and preserving the home.

“As it relates to African Americans in the city of Chicago and this nation, the history has been obfuscated — in many arenas obliterated,” said Ford’s grandson, Kevin Anthony Ford, senior pastor at St. Paul COGIC, 4528 S. Wabash Ave. “So it’s critical that the African American component to history be brought into the light.”

House moved ‘at walking speed’ in 1977

The Clarke-Ford House was built in 1836 on a large swath of land near 17th Street and Michigan Avenue, when the area was still a lakeside prairie.

But in 1872 — 36 years after the home was built — the land on which it sat was sold to a church. So the dwelling’s new owner moved the house four miles south to 4526 S. Wabash Avenue.

Then in 1941, the home was bought by the Louis Henry Ford and the rapidly growing St. Paul COGIC.

Bishop Louis Henry Ford, right, holds the hand of Mamie Till Mobley at her son Emmett’s 1955 funeral. | Sun-Times library

Sun-Times Media

Ford lived in the home and used it as part of the church until the mid-1970s, preserving the building and celebrating its anniversary every year, according to a history of the home compiled by the landmark Glessner House museum.

The Clarke-Ford House was officially landmarked in 1970. The city later bought the residence from St. Paul, and on Nov. 23, 1977, workers began moving the home back to its old neighborhood as part of the creation of the Prairie Avenue Historic District.

The painstaking move would take nearly a month and was as historic as the house itself.

That’s because the CTA’s elevated Green Line had been built since the building’s 1872 move to the South Side. Moving the house north meant jacking up the house nearly 30 feet to get it over tracks near 44th Street and Calumet Avenue and rolling the building across on temporary tracks.

The house was moved “at walking speed,” according to the Glessner House history, from 44th Street, then north on King Drive and Michigan Avenue toward its current site at the Chicago Women’s Park in the Prairie Avenue Historic District.

New name — and a new approach

Bishop Louis Henry Ford died in 1995 at the age of 80. Leader of the 8.5 million member Church of God in Christ denomination, Ford also delivered the eulogy at Emmett Till’s funeral in 1955.

Chicago’s Calumet Expressway was renamed in Ford’s honor in 1996.

Kevin Anthony Ford advocated for the name change, along with the Chicago group Preservation Futures.

“I went on one of the tours there, and the tour guide was explaining the house,” Ford told NPR. “I just blurted out, ‘You haven’t made mention of the history of this house as it relates to St. Paul Church of God in Christ.’ ”

But that’s likely to change now, thankfully. The city’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events said it will hire a curator and create new programming for the Clarke-Ford House, aimed at telling the home’s complete history.

In addition, a million dollars in rehabilitation work is also planned for the house, the agency said.

All of this is needed and welcomed in a city that is seeking — and desperately needs — a more equitable telling of its history as it plots its future.

The Sun-Times welcomes letters to the editor and op-eds. See our guidelines .

FIRST JURISDICTION ILLINOIS

Bishop ocie booker, jurisdictional bishop, mother shirley hughes, jurisdictional supervisor of women,   first jurisdiction illinois women department.

The late 2nd Presiding Bishop Louis Henry Ford founded First Jurisdiction Illinois Church of God in Christ in 1955 when Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, founder of the Church Of God In Christ assigned him a part of the work in Illinois.  The Jurisdiction was named “Central Illinois.”

Mother Mary Ann Davis, who was from the Methodist Church, worked with Mother Lillian Brooks Coffey and Mother Anna Davis in developing the Church of God in Christ Mission in Chicago.  Mother Mary Davis was the first candidate for water baptism in Illinois and our founder, Bishop Charles Harrison Mason, baptized her.  She served in many capacities promoting the “women’s work” in the Church.  She became the supervisor of Northern Illinois Church of God in Christ and also served as Interim Supervisor of Central Illinois until the appointment of Mother Rosie Hines.

Mother Rosie Hines was a member of Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis Tennessee under the leadership of Bishop C.H. Mason.  There she conducted many revivals.  In 1937 she became a member at 40th & State Church of God in Christ in Chicago.  She received the appointment of Central Illinois State Supervisor of Women in 1956.  She served faithfully under Bishop Louis Henry Ford until she went home to be with the Lord on June 17, 1969.

Mother Carrie Cantrell succeeded Mother Hines as State Supervisor of Women.  Mother Cantrell was one who had sat at the feet of some of the greatest women in the Church of God in Christ.  She came through the ranks of the Church serving in many capacities.  She had a genuine love for young people and in memory of her mother, she established the Clara Cantrell Scholarship Guild.  This guild helped many young people acquire a higher degree of education.  As Supervisor of Women, she sought to pass on the rich heritage of our church.  She was appointed Regional Mother over several neighboring states.  She believed in serving the Lord in the beauty of holiness.  She not only worked with Bishop Ford, but also his successors, Bishop Shephard Little and Bishop Ocie Booker, who is presently the Prelate of First Jurisdiction, Illinois.

Mother Charlotte Elizabeth Eades succeeded Mother Cantrell as Supervisor of Women, First Jurisdiction Illinois.  Mother Willie Mae Rivers, the National Supervisor of the Church of God in Christ International, appointed her November 1997.  Prior to her appointment as Jurisdictional Supervisor, she served as Dean of the C.H. Mason/William Roberts Bible Institute in Chicago, District Missionary, Chairman of the District Missionary Unit, Second Assistant State Supervisor to the late Mother Rosie Hines and First Assistant State Supervisor to the late Mother Carrie Cantrell. Mother Eades has steered the Women’s Department into the 21st century by mandating programs such as the Institute Hour, that teach women Godly principles for righteous living and the “New Generation” that consist of young women ages 25 to 45 which prepares them for leadership.  Mother Eades believes in serving the Lord in the beauty of holiness and tells us all the time, “you can’t lead from behind and don’t throw in the towel.”  She believes that the Women have a work to do.  Mother Eades not only leads the women of First Jurisdiction Illinois, but she has been appointed by Mother Rivers to be a part of the “leadership” of the National Women Department.  She serves as the Hartland Area Regional Supervisor and was is a member of the Advisory Board. 

In January of 2014, under the auspices of Bishop Ocie Booker, Mother Shirely Hughes was appointed as the Jurisdictional Supervisor of First Jurisdiction. Under the leadership of the late Bishop Louis Henry Ford, the late Bishop Shepard Little, and Bishop Ocie Booker, Pastor Hughes has served First Jurisdiction-Illinois Church of God in Christ in various capacities. Most notably, she served as an Assistant Supervisor to the late Mother Carrie Cantrell and Mother Charlotte Eades.  First Jurisdiction Illinois Women Department continues to excel and progress under it present leadership, Mother Shirley Hughes

Whose House? The Widow Clarke, Bishop Ford and the Story of Chicago’s Oldest Residence

The 1835 Clarke House is Chicago’s oldest standing residence. It is preserved thanks to the stewardship of Bishop Louis Henry Ford and the St. Church of God in Christ. Join us for a conversation about the house and opportunities to broaden the stories we tell about Chicagoans and our beloved city landmarks.

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The Henry B. Clarke House survives thanks to the decades-long stewardship of Bishop Louis Henry Ford and the St. Paul Church of God in Christ, who purchased the house in 1941. The house is a symbol of Black achievement and community resourcefulness, though the official record downplays this critical chapter in the building’s history.

Our evening will feature Pastor Kevin Anthony Ford, discussing his grandfather’s experience as the long-time steward of the Henry B. Clarke House, along with the St. Paul Church of God in Christ congregation. He will address the campaign to add the Ford surname to the property's title and expand the interpretation program to better include his family’s role in preserving the property.

There is a broader context for the work that is currently being done to expand the story of the Clarke House. In 2017, the National Trust for Historic Preservation established the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The goal of this campaign is to preserve and protect places that have been overlooked in American history and represent centuries of African American activism, achievement and resilience. Tiffany Tolbert, Associate Director of the Fund, will also be joining us to talk about the initiative on local and national levels.

This program celebrates National Preservation Month, celebrating our heritage through historic sites.

Program moderator: Elizabeth Blasius, Partner, Preservation Futures

Elizabeth Blasius is a leading voice in the history and preservation of vernacular and postmodern architecture and co-founder of Preservation Futures, a Chicago-based firm using the tools of preservation to support equity and resilience in the built environment. Prior to founding Preservation Futures, Blasius worked in natural disaster recovery and mitigation as it relates to historic buildings. Blasius serves on the board of Logan Square Preservation and DOCOMOMO US/Chicago and is Adjunct Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture.

Presenter: Kevin Anthony Ford

Kevin Anthony Ford is Pastor of Saint Paul Church of God Christ. His lifelong relationship and commitment to the Church of God in Christ, community and residents are deeply rooted in history. Pastor Ford carries on the visionary spirit, fiery passion and the humanitarian tradition of his fathers, Bishop Charles Mason Ford and Bishop Louis Henry Ford (grandfather), in the cause of community awareness. Striving to uplift the moral, social and political consciousness, collaborating with public and private policymakers compelling them to adhere to the needs of underserved communities.

Presenter: Tiffany Tolbert

Tiffany Tolbert is Associate Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund (AACHAF) at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In her position she directs high‐profile national preservation campaigns associated with African American cultural heritage such as the Nina Simone Childhood Home, the John and Alice Coltrane Home, the HBCU Cultural Heritage Stewardship Initiative and Preserving Black Churches, while advancing the AACHAF priorities of the National Trust. Tolbert previously served as Director of the Northwest Field Office at Indiana Landmarks from 2006‐2017. Tolbert is a native of Montgomery, Alabama and holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Huntingdon College (Montgomery, AL) in Political Science and History and Master of Historic Preservation from Georgia State University (Atlanta, GA).

Bishop Ford’s former mansion traveled by flatbed on King Drive 45 years ago

• Erick Johnson
• December 7, 2022

Chicago’s iconic Martin Luther King Drive has seen numerous Bud Billiken Parades, festivals, demonstrations and marches in its rich history.

But 45 years ago on December 18, 1977, a two-story, 14-room, 120-ton mansion with marble fireplaces was placed on a huge flatbed and driven down King Drive in a dramatic scene that rivaled any showstopping parade float.

That mansion was the Clark-Ford House, the city’s oldest house.

For nearly four decades, the late iconic Civil Rights leader Bishop Louis Henry Ford lived in the Greek revival mansion that had several different addresses in its 186-year history. As the home’s Black owners, Ford and his wife, Margaret, lived there for 37 years while they presided over the St. Paul Church of God in Christ, located next to the home at 4526 S. Wabash.

A May 16, 1965, article in the Chicago Tribune said, “A Negro congregation is preserving a Chicago landmark—the city’s oldest building.”

On a cold day in December 1977, the historic 14-room mansion held hundreds spellbound as they watched city workers achieve an incredible feat. Using hydraulic jacks, workers lifted the house off its foundation before raising the structure 25 feet in the air and moving it across the Green Line “L” tracks. The manse was then lowered to the ground and placed on a huge flatbed that took it to the Prairie Avenue Historic District near its original location.

It is a story about Chicago’s oldest house that has been told many times. But few know about the details of the home’s incredible journey, as it traveled north for nearly a mile on a huge flatbed on Bronzeville’s iconic King Drive, taking up the entire street and stopping traffic in each direction.

The house was driven west to Michigan Avenue, where it then turned north and likely passed the Chicago Defender building before it reached its destination at 1827 S. Indiana Ave.

The Bronzeville leg of the home’s trip to the South Loop historically has been under-reported in the press, which until the 1980s published few stories on Black life on the South Side. To move the Clarke-Ford House from the South Side to the Prairie Avenue District, workers had to drive a total of 4.7 miles. King Drive was part of that journey.

Photos from the Clarke-Ford House Museum show Bishop Ford smiling with Black youth on the back of a truck as the house was being removed from its foundation when the project began on November 23, 1977.

Hundreds of spectators braved the cold in Bronzeville to watch a relocation project and spectacle that played out for weeks in Chicago.

In an article in the Chicago Defender on November 26, 1977, Bishop Ford told spectators, “I’m going to tell you young people something. It’s very significant that the first building of Chicago was bought by a Black man. Now just watch how the recognition will pick up after the house is moved out of the Black community.”

Months before the house was moved out of the Black community, the Chicago Tribune ran a story with the headline, “Oldest house in the city to become a showplace.”

The project was expected to take 12 days, but it took much longer. The Englewood Green Line “L” tracks, built after the house was relocated on Wabash, complicated their efforts.

At 44th Street between Calumet and Prairie, workers slowly jacked up the house on wooden cribs that helped them raise the house 25 feet in the air, on the same level as the rail tracks. Temporary rails were laid across the tracks, cables were attached to the house, and trucks on the street below pulled the house slowly across the tracks. All that was left for the workers to do was to lower the structure to the ground. But under cold temperatures, the hydraulic jacks that would have lowered the house froze. The house remained on the Green Line tracks for two weeks until warmer weather allowed it to thaw.

Finally, on Sunday, December 18, the house traveled on King Drive in the last leg of its journey to its new home. The final cost of the move was $410,000.

A photo released by the Clark House Museum shows the manse on the flat bed as it traveled 13 city blocks on King Drive, from 44th Street to 31st Street. The street was likely closed as the structure was so wide that it took up both north and south bound lanes on King Drive. A city truck is shown escorting the house with city workers in hard hats walking along the street with the Greystone homes pictured in the background.

From Martin Luther King Drive, the journey turned left on 31st Street and headed to Michigan Avenue, where it turned right and headed north, past the old Chicago Defender building at 24th and Michigan Ave.

Little else has been documented about the house’s journey through Bronzeville during the 4.7-mile trip to the Prairie Avenue Historic District, where the mansion of department store magnate Marshall Field is among several grand homes that still stands.

For decades historians whitewashed the story of the Clarke-Ford House, ignoring the history and contributions of Bishop Ford and his church. Stories over decades show that Bishop Ford and his church were proud owners of the home. Here, Bishop Ford cemented a Pentecostal movement that included 8.3 million members across the country.

As a Civil Rights leader, Bishop Ford presided over the 1955 funeral of Emmett Till at Roberts Temple, a Church of God in Christ sanctuary on State Street, another Pentecostal church that is about six blocks from St. Paul’s Church.

Bishop Ford died in 1994. Today, his and his wife’s final resting place is at Oak Woods Cemetery next to the family mausoleum of Ebony and Jet Founder John H. Johnson. In 1996, a portion of I-94 was renamed the Bishop Ford.

In life, Bishop Ford and his congregation were still owners of the home when the city of Chicago on October 14, 1970, designated the historic home where Bishop Ford and his wife lived as a Chicago Landmark. Despite Bishop Ford and his church’s contributions in preserving the structure, there was no mention of them on monuments nor on the landmark designation on the city’s website.

But on November 18, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Alderman Pat Dowell (3rd) introduced an ordinance to rename the city’s oldest house the Henry B. and Caroline Clarke/Bishop Louis Henry and Margaret Ford House, or the Clarke-Ford House.

They say the ordinance will reflect the contributions of Bishop Ford and his wife, who led their church to raise at least $35,000 to preserve the house. Newspaper reports showed Bishop Ford and St. Paul Church continued to hold annual anniversary events every year at the house after it was moved to the Prairie Historic District.

“The renaming serves to tell a more complete history of Chicago’s oldest house that not only acknowledges its original owners, but also the significant contributions of Bishop Louis Henry and Margaret Ford in preserving its legacy for future generations to cherish,” said Mayor Lightfoot . Alderman Dowell said, “We are grateful to the many individuals, including the Ford family, neighborhood residents, dedicated volunteers, and community organizations who have cared for the Clarke-Ford House and advocated for its importance over so many years.”

In September, the city began a $1 million renovation effort to restore the home, which is now located at 1827 S. Indiana Ave.

After moving his family from New York in 1833, Henry B. Clarke, a wealthy owner of a flourishing hardware business, built the home in 1836 for $10,000 on 20 acres of land where the family once lived in a log cabin. The pre-Civil War home was built as an unusually large house that was located in what is now approximately 1700 S. Michigan Ave.

John Chrimes, a prominent tailor, bought the house in 1872, a year after the Great Chicago Fire. The house escaped the historic blaze, but not taking any chances, the Chrimes family moved the house 28 blocks south and one block west to 4526 S. Wabash Ave. The Bronzeville area was once part of Hyde Park when it was a township, but by the time the house was moved, Hyde Park had been annexed to Chicago in 1861.

In 1941, two granddaughters of Chrimes sold the house to Bishop Ford and St. Paul’s for reportedly $7,000 after the women reportedly tried unsuccessfully to restore the property and sell it to the city.

In January, 1977, Ford sold the house to the city for an undisclosed sum. That same year, a fire erupted in the basement of the house but left little damage.

Since the city moved the house to its present location, the National Society of Colonial the Dames in the State of Illinois (NSCDA-IL) has been involved in the Clarke-Ford House since 1977, funding programs as well as the collection of period furnishings in the house.

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