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United Palace Cathedral

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“Gaudy,” “ostentatious,” “too much,” “flamboyant,” “a joke” — these words were frequently used to deride Reverend Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II, a Black televangelist popular in the 1970s. Historically, they were also used in architecture circles to describe movie palaces that proliferated across the American landscape during the 1920s. Despite the continuation of the theological principles that Eikerenkoetter (better known as Rev. Ike) promoted throughout his career — which combine positive thinking and prosperity theology to form what he coined “Science of Living” and resemble the teachings of contemporary televangelists — he is mostly forgotten today. 
 
On the other hand, extravagant movie palaces that have withstood the passage of time have experienced various resurgences and revivals. Outliving the ridicule formerly cast at them for their artificiality, they have attained historical status as, at least since the 1970s, theater preservationist groups have mobilized support to save the structures nationwide. Forging an unexpected symbiotic relationship, for more than forty years televangelism and the movie palace have sustained one another in the structure of Rev. Ike’s church, the United Palace Cathedral.

Rev. Ike purchased Loew’s 175th Street Theatre in 1969 for half a million dollars, and the theater was reborn as the United Palace Cathedral. It became the symbolic center of his religious network, United Christian Evangelistic Association. The physical building is the size of a city block, bordered by 176th Street on the North, Wadsworth Avenue on the East, 175th Street on the South, and finally, Broadway on the West. 

United Palace Cathedral was not the first former movie theater Rev. Ike's church took over. After moving to New York from Boston, where the church’s financial headquarters remained throughout the evangelist's career, Rev. Ike moved into a dilapidated movie theater in Harlem, formerly the Sunset Theatre. It was at that time that he abbreviated his name to Rev. Ike so that it could fit onto the theater’s marquee, which succinctly read: Rev. Ike Every Sunday.
 

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