It is Sunday. Cold rains drum winter's funeral dirge on the pavement. The street, an asphalt river, is alive with sinners ferrying back and forth without a Charon in sight. The church is boarded, empty, totally silent.

Two-by-two descending. Pause. Wait for the clear. A man with police blue sweatpants approaches the building- he looks through the windows and then back toward our cars. He waits.

Inside, the blissfully ignorant tune guitars. Within the cars we sweat and whisper.

The man in the blue sweats stands, walks towards the building again- and urinates on the church. He saunters down the avenue. High-fives all around.

Our journey could have been mapped by Dante. Descending into the basement gymnasium and the kitchen, with its ancient iron furnaces- back up to the soggy ground floor, where two brass organ pipes lay like fallen trees- then upwards balcony, then attic, then above to the steeple, with the sanctuary and all of Detroit below.

Sam, his hooded sweatshirt covering his face like a cowl, is virtually motionless on the balcony. It is only his baritone challenge to the mute organ below that reminds us that he is not mere apparition.

The day progresses through the church's forgotten recording studios, classrooms, and offices. Witnessed through a window, an adjacent church buzzes like Dido's Carthage.

West of the sanctuary was an open rostrum, a pulpit, and a leaky skylight- which afforded the brightest shooting of the day. To a congregation of film crew, Ohtis sang their four part sermons, their baritone beatitudes of personal struggle. And as a baptismal rain dripped onto each of our foreheads, it is revealed that in song the spirit remains. And all of us trespassers are harmonizing with chorus of reverberations still vibrating somewhere deep with in the wood, brass, and stone that surrounds us.

- Phreddy Wischusen
With the birth of Detroit's first cathedral came a pattern of every denomination wanting its own place of worship. As time went on, the social structure began to diminish which changed the diaspora of the city. In short, it was a simple case of building too fast and fleeing even faster. People left and the churches remained as a reminder of the one thing that kept the city of Detroit together hundreds of years ago: faith.

Thrice trading denominations over its 100 plus year existence, "St. Lonely", as we so coined this once flourishing sanctuary, has sat vacant - save the temporary shelter seeker or brave photographer - for over 10 years now. The city's often unforgiving elements over this decade of decadence reconsidered helped produce the decay apparent throughout its many chambers. "St. Lonely", in all its beautiful abandonment, is only one of Detroit's many shuttered religious dwellings. A casualty rather than a bellwether of something far more damning, it stands amidst the many still thriving and historically significant churches which call this city home.
Photo by Jeremy Franchi Photo by Jeremy Franchi Photo by Candace O'Leary Photo by Jeremy Franchi Photo by Candace O'Leary Photo by Jeremy Franchi Photo by Candace O'Leary Photo by Jeremy Franchi Photo by Candace O'Leary Photo by Jeremy Franchi Photo by Candace O'Leary Photo by Candace O'Leary Photo by Jeremy Franchi Photo by Jeremy Franchi Photo by Jeremy Franchi Photo by Jeremy Franchi Photo by Jeremy Franchi
Hatefully in Love

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American Christians

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Willard

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Grandpa

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Director
Katie Barkel
Edits
Dave Crosslin
Assistant Editor
Stills
Candace O'Leary
Jeremy Franchi