St. Paul's Reformed Episcopal Church

St. Paul's Reformed Episcopal Church was a prominent congregation of the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC) on the West Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Established by Bishop Charles E. Cheney in 1875, only two years after the REC's founding, the congregation was led by Samuel Fallows, a Union Army brevet brigadier general, educator and Methodist minister who had joined the REC, from 1875 until his death in 1922. Starting in 1932, St. Paul's was also known as the Bishop Fallows Memorial Church. The congregation built a Gothic Revival stone church on the West Side in 1886, where it housed a day school in addition to its services. Amid white flight to Chicago's suburbs in the 1940s, the congregation's membership declined rapidly, although the remaining members were sharply divided about whether to stay in the neighborhood or sell their building. In 1950, after the church leaders and a majority of members sold the building to West Side Community Church, a predominantly black church, several members physically obstructed the new owners from entering, resulting in police response and litigation. St. Paul's moved to a suburban location, eventually combining with another Reformed Episcopal church until formally dissolving in 1973. West Side Community Church continues to hold services in the former St. Paul's building.

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