1042 East Warren Avenue
The Warren Avenue Baptist Church, J. Sands & Sons, Sands Level and Tool Company, Renulife Electric, Beasley-Eastman Laboratories, Warren Avenue Baptist Church Community Center
This piece includes 1042-44 East Warren Avenue and 4841-53 Rivard Street. The structures were connected in the late 1950s.
By the late 1890s, there were two dwellings on the parcels that would eventually contain this church, which was home to one of Detroit’s finest Baptist churches for decades.
On Sunday, February 27, 1921, Jack and Morris Zeisman and Sam Leiberman were arrested for violating prohibition law and allegedly operating a still out of the home at 1042 East Warren Avenue. Officials found 12 gallons of corn whisky and 25 barrels of mash, a porridge-like byproduct of producing alcohol.
The Factory
By that point, likely in the few years prior, a factory was built behind the two structures. On the 1921 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, the factory was in use by J. Sands & Sons.
In 1923, the Detroit Free Press reported that Henry L. Kinnucan handled lease paperwork for the former Sands Level and Tool Company Factory to be used by Renulife Electric for at least five years with an option to buy.
In 1926 and 1927, there were help-wanted advertisements in the paper for an unnamed operation at the factory. They were looking for salespeople, airplane workers, and boat builders. By 1928, the structure was listed as Beasley-Eastman Laboratories.
In 1928, the company was featured in an advertisement for “Life-Lite,” an ultra-violet lamp that was said to give you the light that your body needed but couldn’t get living in Michigan thanks to the cloudy weather. They called it “Light Socked Sunshine,” and you could write or call the facility behind the church in these images to get yours. By 1928, the company had moved to Harper Avenue. However, after that, I haven’t found what occupied the space for a few decades.
The Edifice
In 1938, the Warren Avenue Baptist Church was incorporated on the state level, having been organized the year prior. The congregation purchased the parcels, which still had at least one two-family home when they bought it. A 1957 retrospective in the Detroit Tribune isn’t clear; however, the first services in the building were on October 7, 1937. I can’t be certain if that was in the two-family dwelling or the structure pictured here; however, I’d guess it was the former. On September 23, 1938, the Reverend William R. Matthews answered the call, becoming pastor of Warren Avenue Baptist Church at just 24 years old. According to the piece in the Detroit Tribune, “the pastor and many loyal members spent hours at hard work along with the carpenters, plumbers, plasterers” to build the church.
With a young pastor, the church continued to grow as the decades passed. By the 1950s, the parish had grown to around 1,500 members and fifteen auxiliaries, including a burial association, youth church, educational fund, federal credit union, and more. Church-affiliated credit unions were a pillar of support to bolster black neighborhoods in Detroit and nationwide. Most banking institutions didn’t offer mortgages and loans to Black Americans, so these credit unions helped Detroiters buy homes, start businesses, and establish credit.
In 1956, Cora Mae Brown spoke at the church. Brown was the first black woman elected to a state senate seat in the United States and would have been closing out her second term when she spoke at the church.
The Warren Avenue Baptist Church Choir was known across the city, often performing for special events like anniversaries and celebrations.
Claudette Rogers and William ‘Smokey’ Robinson were married here on November 7, 1959. They were both members of The Miracles, which Claudette joined after her brother, Emerson ‘Sonny’ Rogers, was drafted into the Army. She is known as the ‘First Lady of Motown.’
The Community Center
In 1957, the church celebrated its 20th anniversary. According to the Detroit Tribune, it was around this time that the congregation was preparing funds to purchase the “building to the rear of the church in which a community center is to be erected.” Soon, the former J. Sands & Sons would transform into a community center for the congregation. In the 1950 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, there was a machine shop and factory until that time. The only addition to the structure appears to be the staircase on the Rivard side, shrouded in colorful glass and quite lovely to look at, even today.
The paper listed the church as newly renovated in the 1960s, so the community center was likely complete at that time, and the church may have seen upgrades, too.
Warren Avenue Baptist Church was in the paper frequently in the 1950s and occasionally in the early 1960s; however, after the death of the Detroit Tribune, Detroit’s black population wasn’t covered nearly as much in the large newspapers. The Detroit Free Press and Detroit News mostly covered white issues unless it was related to crime, making it challenging to research this era of Detroit’s history properly. The Detroit Tribune was an asset. The paper went bankrupt in 1952 and was purchased by Ferdinand Fruehauf and under his reign until he died in 1965. The paper folded a year later.
In 1970, the Warren Avenue Baptist Church Choir presented a concert of spirituals at Ford Auditorium downtown, which had opened 14 years prior.
In 1980, Reverend William R. Matthews was named minister of the year.
On October 26, 1990, Reverend William R. Matthews collapsed at his home and died at 76 years old. The next day, he was set to attend a banquet at the Westin Hotel highlighting his long pastorship of the Warren Avenue Baptist Church. Matthews attended Detroit’s Miller High School in Black Bottom, which still stands today. While enrolled, he taught Sunday School and a youth group at New Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Likely, he was a member of that parish when it moved to Mack and Chene and was subsequently bombed in May of 1928, likely by white residents of the neighborhood.
Matthews was the full-time pastor; however, he had received a Bachelor’s Degree in philosophy from the University of Detroit and a Master’s Degree in History and Education from Wayne State University. At the time of his death, he was working on a doctorate. He was married to his wife Alice for 51 years. He was a board member of the National Baptist Convention USA Inc., President of the Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention of Michigan, and Board Chairman of the Carver Camp near Jackson, Michigan.
Reverend William R. Matthews was a Detroiter, through and through.
On the move
After his death, I haven’t found much on the record regarding Warren Avenue Baptist Church. I believe the church was active at this location until the pandemic when the whole world shut down, including churches. Since then, they have left this structure and listed it for sale, moving the congregation to 19500 Schoenherr Street in northeast Detroit.
For years, I noticed an exposed portion of this sanctuary’s roof while cycling down Warren, and it’s been turned into a bonafide hole over the last two years. The repair wouldn’t be challenging; however, there’d have to be a new owner willing to invest the money to do it quickly. The church’s interior is still in fine shape, but water does damage quickly, so I hope work can be done to prevent that soon.
Though this church and attached factory-turned-community-center are on an island, they’re incredibly centrally located. It’s a 15-minute walk from the Detroit Institute of Arts, less than a ten-minute bike ride from Eastern Market, and right off the highway for easy access across the metro area. Hopefully, we’ll see another church here soon or a redevelopment project underway in the next year or two.
