Our building has been used by many organizations throughout the years. Educational, community, and leisure-oriented groups have often rented space in the church, sometimes for many years. 

In August 1950, the Champaign County Board of Education operated the kindergarten of the Leal School District in our basement. Our Memorandum of Agreement with them contains a small mystery: they can use the large basement room for class and school supplies, “except for the partitioned portion at the southeast corner, commonly known as the ‘pie room.’” Does anyone have any idea what the Pie Room was?

By 1962, the Cooperative Nursery School was negotiating to rent the entire church basement for the school year. Classes were held from 9:00 to 3:30, Monday through Friday. The Nursery School let us use their play equipment on Sundays and we let them use our tables and chairs during the week. We provided all the utilities but split the cost of pest control with them. The organizers of the Nursery School also contracted with us to provide space for six evening meetings of a Parent Education Program. In his letter dated September 17, 1962 welcoming the Cooperative Nursery School to our premises, Rev. David Cole invited them to “confer with us and our architect as we plan for a new building.”

When Mary Newland, Chair of the UUCUC Board of Trustees, wrote to the chair of the Nursery School, Robin Caton, in July 1963 welcoming them to spend another school year with us, she let Mrs. Caton know that the church would be “involved in a building program” that might require relocating the playground equipment. On September 3, 1963, the Nursery School sent us a check for $102.25 -- $100.00 for rent, and $2.25 for pest control.

The 1964-65 school year would see us in our “new building,” and Mrs. Newland let Mrs. Caton know that the church wasn’t going to raise the Nursery School’s rent. This agreement would be for one-year only, and be “subject to reconsideration and re-negotiation … after time for a shake-down had elapsed.”

Another educational organization, the Montessori Society of Champaign-Urbana, seems to have spent at least two semesters with us in the mid-1960s. They occupied classrooms downstairs and office space upstairs. 

We might have been home to a children’s French class in 1962 but the potential teacher, James Greenlee, discovered that he couldn’t round-up enough students whose parents were willing/able to pay $80 per week, per student. In 1970, Clara Rolland wanted to teach piano at the church. The Music Committee chair, Wendell Williams, told Mrs. Rolland that he had asked Harlan Moore to “fund the entire purchase of a Steinway upright.” We have an upright piano but I don’t know if Mr. Moore bought it for Mrs. Rolland. 

The most entertaining proposal I found for the use of our building came in 1976 from String Bean Studios, a recording studio owned by Peter Penner, a recent U of I graduate in Electrical Engineering. Mr. Penner wanted to use the church’s belltower for the studio’s equipment. He assured us, though, that “it would be available to ring the church’s bells.” He explained at considerable length that he and his colleagues had real jobs and didn’t need to make a profit with the recording studio. Further, he said, they didn’t record rock and roll, and would, in fact, be the last choice for a rock band. That decision, he said, should relieve church members who are concerned about noise. But … if they were going to record rock … which they weren’t … it “should be played in the basement at reasonable hours when no one else is around.” He spent about half-a-page of the four-page letter describing their equipment and the need for security. Because the “irreplaceable” equipment will be stored in the belltower, and because they won’t be working with rock-n-rollers, they “expect to have relatively few thieves in our midst.” Concerning the church’s pianos, they wanted to repair the pianos in Fellowship Hall and the Rood Loft – did we have a piano up there? They would only play classical music on the sanctuary piano. Good to know. 

Here's a partial list of groups who used our rooms during the 1980s: Grass Roots Group of Second Class Citizens; Phi Delta Kappa; Paul Simon for Congress; Common Cause; Illini Folk Dance Society; Red Cross; A Woman’s Place; Prairie Women’s Circle; Democratic Socialists of America; Boneyard Creek Cloggers; Prairie Alliance; Parents Without Partners; Lavender Prairie Collective; Gay Illini; Rape Crisis; Department of Children and Family Services; Operation Snowball; Society for Creative Anachronism; Girl Scouts; Coalition Against the Death Penalty; Jakobsson for Congress; and the Central America Solidarity Committee.