Save the Church: Help Thunderbird Buy Its Historic Home

About the Campaign:

🏛️♻️ Help Thunderbird Purchase and Restore Its Historic Home 💪🏽🧱

This building is in serious structural distress. Now, as future owners, we finally have the ability — and the responsibility to keep this beautiful and historical church from getting demolished. We have recently lost too many churches to demolition in Philadelphia.

🔗 For everyday updates, purchases, and information on Thunderbird Salvage, check us out on Instagram!

📜 THE HISTORY

The grand building at 2437–49 Frankford Avenue has been a cornerstone of Kensington for over 160 years. Originally constructed in the 1860s and dramatically expanded in 1889 by prominent Philadelphia architect Isaac Pursell, the Frankford Avenue Baptist Church is one of the finest examples of Victorian-era Romanesque Revival architecture in the city:

• 🪨 Hand-laid Wissahickon schist stonework covering the entire street-facing facade
• 🔔 A soaring multi-stage bell tower anchoring the corner of Frankford & Letterly
• 🌈 Stunning original stained glass windows that have watched over this block for generations
• 🪑 A grand sanctuary designed to seat 800 people

The congregation grew alongside the neighborhood for over a century before closing its doors in 1984. For decades after, this magnificent structure slowly lost its fight against time and neglect — until Thunderbird Salvage showed up.

⚡ THE PRESENT

In 2015, Thunderbird Salvage was born in a run-down North Philadelphia warehouse with a simple mission: sustainability through reducing, reusing, and recycling. Three years later, we fell in love with this beautiful old church — because what better match for a salvage storefront than a historic building that needed a little salvaging itself?

Since May 2018, we've grown into a true community institution on Frankford Avenue:

• 🛻 We source everything directly through local estate and business cleanouts
• 💪🏽 Our crews work 7 days a week doing the dirty, physical work most people won't
• ♻️ Thousands of items rescued from landfills and given a second life every year
• 🏘️ Affordable reclaimed goods and essential materials sold directly back to the neighborhood
• 💰 In these hard economic times, we allow the community to have the option to purchase necessities within their budget along with other amazing salvaged items.

We recently locked in a purchase agreement to finally buy our beloved church. But here's what most people don't know:

⚠️ This building is in serious structural distress.

• 🚨 The roof is in poor condition and at real risk of further deterioration and collapse
• 🔧 Emergency structural bracing has already been installed to slow the damage
• 🏗️ Critical repairs need to begin immediately — the clock is ticking
• 🚪 The grand second-floor sanctuary remains closed and out of reach until its essential rebirth has been achieved.
• 👷🏻‍♂️ Fortunately structural engineers have looked over our temporary bracing and confirmed it stable at the moment.

We've done what we could as tenants. Now, as future owners, we finally have the ability — and the responsibility — to save it.

🌟 THE FUTURE

Buying this building and completing the structural repairs is just the beginning. Here's what we're building toward:

• 🎉 Once the church is restored and safe, we'll open the stunning upper floor as a public event and community space, honoring both the building's legacy and the neighborhood it has always served
• 🏛️ A fully restored historic Philadelphia landmark — preserved for generations to come
• 🛍️ A permanent home for Thunderbird Salvage to keep doing the work Kensington depends on
• 🌱 A living example that sustainability, community, and history can all thrive under one roof

We are raising $500,000 to fund the purchase and begin the urgent structural repairs this building desperately needs. Every contribution brings us one step closer to securing this landmark for Kensington and for Philadelphia. As work progresses, we will keep all you updated.

🙏 Help us save the church. Help us build the future.