Sept. 02--The Rev. Lincoln Scott resurrected North Lawndale's historic Central Park Theatre as a church and opened an adjacent homeless shelter and food pantry that served hundreds of men and women on the West Side.
Scott, 82, died Aug. 28 in his South Austin home, said his daughter, Agnes. He had been diagnosed in April with gastrointestinal cancer, she said.
"These last few months were difficult for him," Agnes Scott said. "But he still had a passion for the people in this community."
Scott was born in Arkansas City, Ark., in 1933, and was part of the Great Migration of African-Americans who moved from the South to Chicago after World War II.
He opened his House of Prayer, Church of God in Christ in 1959 at 1309 S. Karlov Ave., and after a few years, moved his congregation to 3440 W. Roosevelt Road.
But by 1970, Scott was looking to move his growing congregation to a well-known but decaying movie palace: the Central Park Theatre in the 3500 block of West Roosevelt .
The Central Park, which Chicago movie theater entrepreneurs A.J. Balaban, Barney Balaban and Sam Katz opened in 1917, had long been a North Lawndale landmark.
Designed by noted movie theater architects C.W. and George Rapp, the theater has been described by historians as one of the first grand movie palaces, where the venue was as much of a draw as the movies and stage shows.
"Before the Central Park, movie theaters were all like nickelodeons, uncomfortable boxes with folding chairs," said David Balaban, author of "The Chicago Movie Palaces of Balaban and Katz" and grandson of one of the five Balaban brothers who ran the theater empire for decades.
"The Central Park was different -- it had the feeling of a European opera house. There wasn't an interest in how movie theaters looked until Balaban Katz built the Central Park."
The Central Park was also probably the first theater in the world to offer air-conditioning, which was produced by a novel carbon dioxide system that pushed cool air through vents in the theater's floor.
Despite its historic significance, the 1,780-seat theater was closed and abandoned by 1970, as the North Lawndale neighborhood fell into poverty.
Scott was encouraged by a member of his congregation to buy the theater and convert it into a church, but first he had to chase out gang members who had taken over the building.
"Even before I bought the building, I would come by and try to clean it up, because vandals had broken in and had taken nearly everything from inside," Scott recalled in a 2013 interview. "There was four feet of water in the basement, all the copper was gone, the chandeliers were missing. It was awful. But the Lord told me that I needed to be there."
Scott was able to clean up the facility, and the church started holding services in the theater in 1971.
"If Rev. Scott hadn't acquired the building, it would have remained abandoned and would have continued to deteriorate to the point where it couldn't have been saved," said David Syfczak, a retired Chicago police officer who serves as the caretaker for the shuttered Uptown Theatre and as a board member of the Theatre Historical Society of America.
Scott's congregation reached a peak of 500 by the 1980s. In the late '80s, Scott opened Hope House, a homeless shelter and food pantry just west of the church. Scott's daughter said he launched the shelter after two homeless men suffering from hypothermia were found dead outside his church.
In 2005, Scott began efforts to restore the building to its original 1917 state, after it was added to the National Register of Historic Place. But he was stymied by a lack of money.
"It was obvious that he loved the building," said Lisa DiChiera with the advocacy group Landmarks Illinois, which helped Scott apply for a $5,000 grant for a conditions assessment of the church in 2005.
"But he was juggling so many things -- trying to restore the building, trying to maintain his congregation and the food pantry," DiChiera said. "He seemed like he was so overworked and he had no clear funding support."
Scott was honored by the city in 2008, which renamed a stretch of Roosevelt from St. Louis Avenue to Central Park Avenue as "Rev. Dr. Lincoln Scott Road".
In February 2013, Scott was forced to shut down after the city of Chicago cited the church for 105 building code violations. He faced a $36,000-per-day fine if he was caught holding an event in the building before the violations were addressed.
Scott was also sued by creditors alleging nonpayment of credit card and car payment bills. Scott said he fell behind on payments for improvements to the theater and for a church minivan.
"I stumbled a couple of times, yes I did, but the bottom line is I kept the church open, the lights on and the gas on," Scott said in a 2013 interview. He estimated that his overall expenses for the church and shelter were around $22,000 a month.
"I've used money from every source to keep that building up, because it's my life's work," Scott added.
Those violations still have not been addressed due to financial difficulties, which is one reason why Landmarks Illinois had the building on its most endangered list in 2015.
Scott's daughter believes that the problems with the theater, combined with his losing state and city grants for Hope House, affected his health.
"But he tried to persevere, even though I think his health really started to decline after the city closed the church," Agnes Scott said.
"I think his greatest accomplishment was being able to affect the lives of men who lived in the street, and to be able to touch their souls," she added.
Scott also is survived by his wife, Clarola; two other daughters, Brenda Scott-Valentine and Veronica; and two sons, Lawrence and Lincoln-Tyrone.
A funeral service is set for noon Saturday at St. James Ministry Church of God in Christ, 11750 S. Lowe St.
jowens@tribpub.com
