From the outside, the former Emmanuel United Methodist Church, 1786 Hwy. 175, in Richfield looks like what it long was – a modest, handsome small town Gothic Revival church.

But, these days, on the inside, the 1898 Cream City brick former church has been converted into Lion Performance Hall, a state of the art performance and recording venue, by owners Theodore Koth and Sacia Jerome.

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Since buying the moribund building three years ago, this pair of Milwaukee musicians (Sacia’s a cellist and Theodore’s a guitarist) has worked to save what little original detail was left while also making the space pitch perfect for chamber music and other performances.

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“Milwaukee is really loud," says Koth. "There are plenty of decent properties and churches that are gorgeous, but the street noise – buses going by and things like that – is a big problem. 

“But this also just was the right place at the right time. It's kind of not far, it's a half hour, it's right off the highway. The guy had it on the market for a couple of years and then took it off when we were just starting to look in this area. I remember seeing it on the market, and then I got really disappointed (when the listing was pulled), but then it came back at a lower price and I thought, ‘sweet’.”

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The day before I visited, the Koths hosted an open house and performance in the building, which has a bar, an office and the performance space – in the former sanctuary – that can accommodate 80-100 people.

“The village is super happy,” Koth says. “Some of the locals that came in yesterday had stopped in last year and said, ‘can we check out this space?’ So they saw it all gutted, and then saw it again yesterday, and they went, ‘whoa.”

I’ve only seen photos from before and during construction but even those had me saying, “whoa,” once I saw the completed work.

The history of the church dates back to the earliest days of Richfield itself.

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In 1842, Philip Laubenheimer, who immigrated from Germany’s Hesse-Darmstadt region, bought 120 acres of land on the Fond du Lac Road and by the time he platted the city of Laubenheim in 1845, he’d already built a house, a log cabin tavern and a store that started off selling just a few essentials, like coffee, sugar and sewing needles.

While the tavern quickly became the little settlement’s meeting place, in 1843, a group of settlers from the Held, Mantz, Straub, Kaul, Muehl, Schlaefer, Schuck and Bauer families began to gather for classes in their homes under the guidance of Milwaukee’s Rev. M. Hauert, who was focusing his energies on the area northwest of Menomonee Falls at the time.

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In 1852, the Emanuel’s Kirke was officially organized with Rev. Henry Esch as pastor in a small log church south of Rugby Junction, on the site of the Cedar Park Cemetery as its first home.

Later, after having been expanded, the log church was replaced by (or expanded into, it’s not clear) a simple clapboard building.

This, of course, is because the community was growing, especially when after its founding in 1855, the La Crosse and Milwaukee Railroad ran through the area and Laubenheimer donated land for a depot.

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In 1859, the name of the town was changed to Richfield, but Laubenheimer was no less influential. His tavern continued to boom and he added a hotel, run by his son Henry, at the train station.

In 1868, he expanded his store and then doubled it in size again seven years later, by now selling everything from groceries and farm produce to shoes and hats.

When Laubenheimer died in 1878, his son William ran the store, served as postmaster and built a grain elevator, as well as – with his brother Henry – farming and leasing pretty much all the land their father had initially purchased.

In 1882, William built a new Queen Anne-style store on land bought from his mother on Depot Street and Highway 175.

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In 1898, the Emanuel congregation bought the 75x249-foot site of the current church from William for $175 and hired Richfield’s Fred Klippel to build it for $1,990, though in the end it cost $2,938.12.

The church was to have a limestone foundation in front, a plastered ceiling and kerosene lamps.

Alas, the name of the architect – if there was one – has been lost to history.

A dedication sermon was delivered by Prof. S. L. Umbach of the Theological Seminary of Naperville, Illinois on Sept. 25, 1898.

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The first marriage in the new building – uniting Emma Bluem and Jacob Kessel, Jr. – took place on Nov. 21, 1905, likely about six years after the first baptism – Harvey Klumb, born April 15, 1899, to farmers Fred Klumb and Jerusa Muehl.

In 1900, the kerosene lamps were replaced with gaslights and five years later a bell was hung in the tower. In 1917, electricity was installed.

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Since we’re sharing firsts, let’s not leave out George Mantz, who was the first sexton and janitor was George Mantz, according to a document shared by the Richfield Historical Society.

At some point, an addition wrapped around the south side of the building and an unexcavated part was dug out to expand the basement.

Originally, as you can see from the early photo in this post, the brick tower had a wooden steeple on top, but that was taken down, presumably in 1970, when the bell was removed, and the oculus window in the brick tower was closed up (though inside the tower you can still see its wooden frame).

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It seems that Emmanuel United Methodist Church closed its doors in 2007 and, after the building sat vacant for a time, it was occupied from 2014 until 2020 by Faith Journey Church, which moved to a new building in Germantown.

After that, says Koth, it was owned by a man who leased it to a photographer that used it periodically as a studio.

Since they bought it three years ago, the Koths have done a ton of work.

Not only did they build an addition on the back to create an office, new restrooms and ADA accessibility, but they also did a gut renovation of the 1898 church building.

While the stained glass windows and the hardwood floor in the sanctuary survive inside, not much else does, but that’s been the case since before the Koths purchased the building.

They did uncover some of the original stenciled paint on the walls of the sanctuary during their interior demolition (as well as some 1950s wallpaper that covered the paint), but that – and the plaster it adorned – was beyond repair and thus did not survive.

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There was quite a bit of damage to the walls because, Koth says, there was basically nothing there between the exterior brick and the interior plaster. So, pretty much the entire interior had to be pulled out, the exterior walls tuckpointed and the inside rebuilt.

“We tuckpointed the whole church,” Koth says, “because we weren’t going to do all this work to have it leak. The initial plan was just to put the addition on and then keep the church space as it was, and then renovate as we went along to try to open up for performances. 

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“But then I realized that acoustically, it wasn't great. So I hired an acoustical firm to come analyze the space and they said, ‘Okay, all you have to do is put some drywall up.’ And I thought, ‘well, I don't know what's behind the walls.’ And that led to a little exploration, and we discovered there was nothing behind the walls. It wasn't insulated.”

Now, the walls are insulated, the floors are insulated, the stage is insulated – a request that surprised contractors Keller Construction, Koth says – and when we’re in the basement, where there is a green room/rehearsal space, Koth taps on HVAC duct work to show me that even that is insulated.

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“So you can't even hear the wind as it's blowing through,” Koth says with a smile.

The performance space is beautiful and sounds great. There’s a Steinway piano available and, in a flight case, Koth has the gear needed to record music in the carefully calibrated building using Cubase software.

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“We have Millennia preamps, so really, really nice preamps, and Neumann microphones,” he says. “All the good stuff.”

 Now that Lion is basically complete – the Koths still plan to finish the basement with a quintet of teaching studios for music lessons – they plan to host music and more.

“As far as renting, we had a baby shower in here and it was very successful,” Koth says. “The chairs are mobile, so we can customize seating for whatever we may need. We don't really have a full kitchen, but we can cater in.”

But the main goal has always been music.

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“We wanted to make a recording space that was intimate, a place for concerts and things like that, but specifically for chamber music was really what we were going for,” says Koth. 

“There are a lot of students like with the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra and other schools around the area that need a good place to record with a really great piano. We will do performances. If we can do one concert a month, that would be great.”