Shrine of the Black Madonna

Opening to great fanfare in 1940, the Gordon Street Theater offered popular movies to residents of Atlanta’s West End. The theater closed its doors in the late1960s, when African Americans breached the color line, adding their own swag to the culture of West End, a community older than Atlanta itself. 

In 1970, a cadre of enthusiastic, young, men and women from Detroit, turned the abandoned Gordon Street Theater into their church—The Shrine of the Black Madonna. The church’s founder, the Revend Albert B. Cleage Jr., (father of Atlanta playwright Pearl Cleage), was internationally known for his new directions to the Black church. The Shrine of the Black Madonna Cultural Center and Bookstore became the hub for Black art and literature in Atlanta; the church’s learning center laid a blueprint for educating Black youth, and its farm constitutes the largest, Black-owned acreage in the United States. 

Parking: Plenty. Enter on Gordon Place (one way street, going south). Parking lot will be on the driver’s left.

Meet up: In front of the Shrine of the Black Madonna Cultural Center and Bookstore

Host or Publisher The Atlanta Preservation Center