It used to be a convent, now this Belleville house is a do-it-yourself punk venue

Somewhere in the woods just east of North Illinois Street on Douglas Road lies the site of a former convent of Ursuline nuns. At the center of the grounds is a 3,000-plus square-foot building that once served as the order’s “motherhouse.”

According to the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, the Bishop of Belleville invited the sisters to staff schools in the metro-east in 1930. A later invitation for a permanent convent in the city from Bishop Henry Althoff led to the eventual purchase of the motherhouse in 1945.

Like every nunnery, these sisters lived in communal housing and lived a life focused on duty, education and meditation. It was a peaceful existence, with woods surrounding all sides,

Once the sisters moved out in 2005, after a merger with another Ursuline order, the future of the site became unclear until the city decided to parcel and sell the houses on the property.

It was a goth couple with aspirations of making it a do-it-yourself music space that purchased the motherhouse. It was probably not the future the order envisioned for their convent.

“As soon as we moved we were like, ‘this is too much house to do nothing with,” said Gabe Kimme, who bought the house with his partner, Jackie Eberle, and turned it into “The Nunnery,” a DIY music space that is simultaneously secretive and non-exclusive.

“We don’t put a lot of advertising out there to avoid unwanted attention,” Kimme said, “but we really wanted to bring something cool to Belleville, because all of the places like this were pretty much only in St. Louis.”

Enlisting the help of his friend, Richard Summitt, Kimme got to work rennovating the structure into a mixed-use home, performance space and recording studio.

“I learned so much fixing everything up with Gabe,” Summitt said. “He’s extremely handy.”

Five years later, the building has a built in stage, green room, soundproofed infrastructure and a public address system as professionally installed and managed as any other city performance venue.

But what separates The Nunnery from any businesses offering musical performances in Belleville isn’t just the sound, it’s also the mission. Kimme, Eberle and Summitt pride themselves on keeping the space “NOTAFLOF” — an ethos in the worldwide punk community meaning “no one turned away for lack of funds.”

“We don’t charge any money and we’re not selling anything,” Sumitt said. “People can donate to touring bands if they want, but we’re just here to make a fun and safe space with actually good music.”

Though he refutes the title due to the do-it-yourself nature of the space and the lack of hierarchy within the punk community, Summitt is a manager of sorts at The Nunnery.

Summitt organizes the acts, manages sound levels, helps book bands and performs regular maintenance and additions on the property while simultaneously taking integrated studies courses at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He is also expecting his first child, proving the passion he holds for the project.

“I do this all for Belleville,” Summitt said. “We’re all about community here. It’s a place that’s alternative and anyone is welcome.”

The evidence of The Nunnery as a former convent hasn’t been erased but enhanced, with decor and religious motifs macabre enough to make Rob Zombie blush. A variety of crosses, prayer candles and weeping Marys taken from a closing Catholic school dot the inside, while a massive crown of thorns serves as a backdrop for the outside stage.

“We thought it would be cool to keep it kind of religious themed,” said Kimme. “We got a lot of this stuff from a friend who works in a Catholic school. They were getting rid of some stuff and we were like, ‘we’ll take it!’”

The motherhouse still looks very much like an actual nunnery from the outside. A large cross sits atop the building over a facade of stone brick Roman arches. At night, the arches are filled with lounging “punks, goths and weirdos” comfortable with each other’s presence in the thin light and cigarette smoke.

“It really is a special place,” Kimme said.

Kimme and Summitt said the idea for The Nunnery came mostly from a lack of alternative spaces in Belleville and the metro-east as a whole.

“Most of the venues here book the same four cover bands that play every week,” Summitt said. “A walk down Main Street is great if you want to hear ‘Copperhead Road’ four times in the same night.”

The group has been throwing shows at The Nunnery in full-force for two years now. Their inception saw backlash from the city of Belleville, but after measures were taken to minimize their impact, the city has allowed shows to continue at the location.

“We were going to be fined something crazy — like $15,000 per day or something — if we didn’t stop holding shows,” Kimme recalled. “We became a lot more low-key after that and made it clear that we weren’t trying to be a business or anything.”

“One neighbor got upset about the parking situation, which makes sense,” Summitt said. “I don’t want anyone blocking the driveway either. So now the only thing they can get upset about is noise, but we make sure to end everything by 10 p.m. to be respectful of our neighbors. It’s easy since we’re pretty much out in the woods here.”

With that being said, some times the acts get a little out of control and sets have to end early or be turned down, such as on a recent Thursday when they hosted an artist performing noise, a genre of music defined by its shrill, unstructured nature.

“The loudness of this does make me a little nervous, if I’m being honest,” Summitt said sheepishly in the middle of the set.

While musical acts are the primary form of performance art revelers can expect to see at The Nunnery, it is by no means the only one. In addition to a folk punk trio, a California-based noise artist and an acoustic solo performer, that recent Thursday’s event also included a performance from a puppeteer from the Missouri Ozarks.

“I am really glad someone is here taking photos because I don’t think my mom understands what I do at all,” said Mindi Romani. Her marionette, in the guise of an elderly southern grandmother, warned the crowd of the impending dangers of oil extraction.

“We had a Halloween rave once that had, like, 300 or 400 people show up,” Summitt said, recalling a time when things got a little out of hand at The Nunnery.

“That’s never going to happen again,” Kimme added, laughing.

This story was originally published October 16, 2024 at 6:00 AM.