South Side church seeks to reawaken Stony Island's architectural slice of ancient Persia

The busy intersection of 79th Street, Stony Island and South Chicago avenues — where the Chicago Skyway ramps lash overhead and the suited-and-booted Nation of Islam brothers sell the Final Call newspaper — holds one of Chicago’s most unusual architectural finds.

It’s the Rev. John L. Conner Fellowship Hall, a Moorish Revival dream rendered in polychromatic brick and terra cotta at 7901 S. Stony Island Ave. There is even an honest-to-goodness ornamental minaret poking above the building’s Spanish tile roof.

Built in 1928 as a high-toned restaurant called Raphael’s, the building — owned by nearby Haven of Rest Missionary Baptist Church, 7925 S. South Chicago Ave., since 1964 — has been a traffic stopper and curiosity at the intersection for nearly a century.

“It was the place to be,” Hav