The ministers, staff and Sunday school classes of Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation will be united once again in the coming months, following the purchase of a long-shuttered billiards hall in Oak Park.
The congregation recently purchased the building that long served as home to Oak Park Billiards, 1019 South Blvd., which was shuttered roughly 10 years ago and has remained vacant ever since.
The church purchased the 7,700-square-foot building with pool tables, statues, and other collectibles left in place from the day the billiards hall closed its doors. Unity Temple opened the billiards hall to the public on Saturday, Oct. 1, to try to move some of the historic 1920s Brunswick tables and ephemera.
Rev. Alan Taylor, senior minister at Unity Temple, said the sale went well and almost half of the remaining 32 historic pool tables were sold, along with much of the statuary and doodads.Â
Taylor said he purchased one of the tables himself and donated it to the Chicago Institute for Nonviolence.Â
“We are totally open to folks buying some of these for nonprofits; we’d love to see them in our community,” he said.
Dan Crimmins, president of the board of the congregation’s trustees, said the build out of the space is expected to begin in November with a completion date set for March 2017.
The space will finally unite the congregation and its staff, which has been spread out around town in part because of the growth of the congregation as well as the multi-million dollar renovation of the Temple itself.Â
Taylor said that he’s spent 13 years working to help Unity Temple figure out its space-shortage problem.Â
“We needed space back then, 13 years ago,” he said, noting that the congregation’s Sunday school program has tripled in that time to about 300 students.
Taylor said the church has rented classrooms at 807 South Blvd. for about six years because of the overflow. Staff is located at 805 South Blvd. and ministers are currently operating out of the Community Bank building at Lake and Forest.Â
Crimmins said the new space at the former Oak Park Billiards will include eight offices for staff, five classrooms and a meeting space with seating for about 120 people.
Having their administrative and classroom space about a third of a mile from the temple itself is “not ideal,” Taylor said, “But it’s the best we can do given the limitations of our location.”
Unity Temple has been in transition for more than a year now with the $23-million rehab of the historic building designed by former Oak Parker and world-renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It is considered by many the first modern building ever built.
The renovation includes work inside and out, with installation of shotcrete to the building’s exterior and extensive work to interior wood paneling, art glass and skylights, among others.Â
Heather Hutchison, Unity Temple Restoration Foundation’s executive director, said in June that the restoration project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.Â
CONTACT: tim@oakpark.com