Est. 1909 · Adaptive reuse of 1909 First Baptist Church sanctuary · Spirit Square arts-campus conversion (1976) · Named for jazz composer Loonis McGlohon
The Loonis McGlohon Theatre occupies the original 1909 sanctuary of First Baptist Church of Charlotte, on North College Street in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. The Romanesque Revival church was designed and built during the period when Charlotte was growing rapidly as a textile-industry and banking center in the New South economy; First Baptist Church served as one of the principal Protestant congregations of the city's late-Victorian downtown.
First Baptist relocated to a larger campus in the mid-twentieth century, and the original building sat vacant for a period before being acquired for adaptive-reuse conversion to an arts campus in 1976. The renovation, undertaken under the leadership of community arts advocates including the broadcaster and arts patron Charles Crutchfield, preserved the sanctuary's principal architectural elements — the rose window, barrel-vaulted ceiling, brick exterior, and bell tower — while converting the interior to performance use. The campus was named Spirit Square in reference to both the building's religious origin and the arts-revival aspirations of the conversion.
The primary performance space was renamed the Loonis McGlohon Theatre after the death of the Charlotte jazz pianist and composer Loonis McGlohon in 2002. McGlohon was a nationally recognized figure in mid-twentieth-century American popular music, with composing credits including a number of standards recorded by Frank Sinatra and a long-running collaboration with the lyricist Alec Wilder. Blumenthal Performing Arts assumed operational responsibility for Spirit Square in the early 2000s and has continued to program the Loonis McGlohon Theatre alongside its other downtown Charlotte venues.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_Square
- https://www.blumenthalarts.org/venues/spirit-square
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loonis_McGlohon
Faint distant choral singing reported in sub-basementFootsteps in empty sanctuary during off-hoursSense of presence in bell-tower stairwell
The Loonis McGlohon Theatre's paranormal reports are unusually coherent with the building's documented history. The most frequently described phenomenon is the sound of faint distant choral singing reported by stagehands, custodial staff, and occasional performers working in the building's sub-basement service areas during off-hours. The singing is described as coming from above — that is, from the direction of the converted sanctuary — and is generally identified by listeners as resembling Protestant hymn singing rather than contemporary musical material.
Footsteps in the empty sanctuary during off-hours are a secondary recurring report; the converted space's high ceiling and acoustic properties make footstep sounds carry distinctively, and staff have described the experience of hearing measured walking when no one else is in the building. The bell-tower stairwell, which is preserved in the original 1909 configuration and is used primarily for technical access, is associated with a sense of additional presence by long-tenured staff.
Staff folklore consistently attributes these phenomena to the building's seven decades as an active Baptist church rather than to any specific tragic event. The reports are described as benign — the building's earlier ecclesiastical occupants continuing to occupy the space in coexistence with the present arts programming. Blumenthal Performing Arts does not market the venue's folklore; the reports are workplace observations rather than promoted attractions.
