Hungarian Reformed Church (Delray)

01 / The story of this place

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Hungarian Calvinists organized in Delray on December 14, 1904, as the Magyar Reformed Church of Delray, and in 1906 put up a small wooden church at West End and Vanderbilt streets. The community later divided: in 1922 a group of members founded the Free Magyar Reformed Church on Thaddeus Street, and in January 1941 a strictly independent congregation, the Hungarian Reformed Church, was organized under the Rev. Tibor Tóth. It soon bought land at Dearborn and Vanderbilt streets and built this brick church with a tall steeple. It grew into Delray's largest Hungarian Reformed parish: when the Free Magyar congregation of about 300 merged into it in April 1959, it counted some 2,200 members. As families moved to the suburbs, the church sold its Delray buildings in 1965 and built a new home in Allen Park. The Dearborn Street church then passed to other congregations, among them Peter's Rock Missionary Baptist Church, which bought it in 1989, and it stood empty from 2020. Before dawn on November 4, 2022, a fire gutted it, and crews pulled down the unstable steeple.

1. Congregation organized in January 1941 under the Rev. Tibor Tóth
2. About 2,200 members after absorbing the Free Magyar Reformed Church in 1959
3. Congregation sold its Delray buildings in 1965 and moved to Allen Park
4. Gutted by fire on November 4, 2022