East Grand Boulevard Methodist Church
In 1907, an aging Charles Ryerson, a prominent Methodist leader, was commissioned to open a church in Detroit, Michigan. He was the son of Egerton Ryerson, a prominent Canadian Methodist leader, who has come under fire in recent years for his racist policies on education and his staunch segregationist beliefs. In 2021, 215 unmarked graves were found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The policies promoted by Charles and his father lead directly to the creation of schools like this.
After only one year, Ryerson’s church was ready for it’s grand opening on June 27th 1908. Charles wouldn’t lead this congregation for long though. He had disagreements with the church’s other leaders and left the church to the capable Reverend Samuel Jennings. Charles died in 1909, less than a year after the church opened it’s doors. Things didn’t work out much better for Jennings though, he was dead by 1910 when the church renamed to the Aaron C Fischer Memorial Episcopal Methodist Church.
After this, things settled down church and its congregation. By 1913 over 600 people would routinely attend mass here, which was about 80% capacity. By 1936, an addition that included a basketball gym was added on. The addition also included classrooms and a small theater. As demographics changed the the economic downturn of the 1980’s hit Detroit, attendance dwindled. In 1985 the church closed and was taken over by the Second Unity Full Gospel Baptist Church. This lasted for all of 15 years. In 2000 they vacated the church and it has remained abandoned since that time. In 2017, some work was done to the roof of the building, but it was not completed. Today the church still stands, slowly rotting away, with the ever-so ironic phrase “And thou shalt have good success, and you shall say God did it” plastered along the balconies.