Sold for $300,000 in 1977, Now Earmarked for 69 Luxury Condos: The Fight Over Washington’s Marble Chapel

• The Latter-day Saints built the Washington Chapel in the 1930s as a miniature Salt Lake Temple.
• It was sold in 1977 for $300,000 and resold the same day to the Unification Church for $475,000.
• Dila Development proposes a six-storey annex with 69 luxury condos and community space in the restored chapel.
• A small group of Unification Church members opposes the sale and has offered to buy the building for $6 million to $7 million.

A landmark chapel in Washington, D.C., built by one church and owned for decades by another, is now in the sights of a housing developer. The Deseret News reported that Dila Development wants to turn the historic Washington Chapel into luxury housing, while a small group of worshippers is trying to stop the sale.

The Latter-day Saints built the chapel during the Great Depression as a miniature Salt Lake Temple. It opened in 1933 with bird’s-eye marble quarried in Utah, a 5,000-pipe organ and nine stained-glass windows. The church closed it in 1975, after the Washington D.C. Temple opened. In 1977 it sold the building to Columbia Road Recording Studios for $300,000, and Columbia Road resold it the same day to the Unification Church for $475,000.

Dila Development now proposes a six-storey annex with 69 luxury condos, and 2,000 square feet of community space inside the restored chapel. It is targeting a January groundbreaking and completion in 2028. The newspaper noted that the developer’s first submissions to the city’s Historic Preservation Review Board did not set out plans for the stained-glass windows or the mosaic of Jesus Christ on the Mount of Olives.

A group of Unification Church members, led by building committee chairman Rev Henry Mungai and senior pastor Rev Jean-Pierre Sonna, opposes the deal. They have offered to buy the chapel themselves for between $6 million and $7 million but do not have the money. Mungai said: “The process under which it is being sold is fraudulent.” Property manager Randall Francis said most members had left to worship elsewhere but a small group had refused to leave. Earlier in 2025 a judge ordered more than six people living in the building to vacate by June 30.

The numbers tell the property story: a building sold for $300,000 in 1977 is now weighed against a buy-back offer of several million dollars and a condo scheme. Jamaica has its own stock of old churches on valuable urban plots, and the same pressures apply when congregations shrink and costs rise. Whoever holds the title, and whoever controls the decision to sell, will decide what happens. Congregations that want a say should settle those questions long before a developer comes calling.

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