Across from Columbus Circle resides an old church where ivy vines crawl up a red brick exterior toward a gray steeple. Through its oak front doors, mid-afternoon sunlight filters through stained-glass windows, glinting off crosses and candelabras that decorate the walls. Leon Bridges’ “Better Man” plays softly in the background, accompanied by the clinking of glasses at the bar and the scraping of knives on plates.

For the past 18 years, The Mission restaurant in downtown Syracuse has specialized in Mexican cuisine fused with Latin American flavors. But more than 150 years ago, the former Wesleyan Methodist Church was the site of a different cultural landmark: It was a station along the Underground Railroad.

“Our abolitionist history is absolutely pivotal in the movement that led to the eventual end of slavery,” said Gregg Tripoli, executive director of the Onondaga Historical Association, in an email.

“It helps define our community identity at an early stage of our development as one that took action about issues and values we felt strongly about,” he said.

The Wesleyan Methodist Church was established in Syracuse in 1846, splitting from the Methodist Episcopal Church because of its affiliations with slavery. Under the leadership of its minister, Luther Lee, the Wesleyan Methodist Church operated as a way-station for fugitive slaves fleeing the South leading up to the Civil War. Housed in the church’s basements, archaeological research conducted by two Syracuse University professors in 1994 revealed several clay faces carved into the walls. The Onondaga Historical Association has the markings on display in their downtown location.

Steve Morrison, owner of The Mission, didn’t know about the church’s historical legacy when he began leasing it nearly two decades ago. Some might have just seen an abandoned church, closed for shop. But in it, Morrison — an SU alum with a degree in sculpture — saw the opportunity to cultivate something new.

“A proverbial light bulb went off one day and I thought this was potentially a good location,” Morrison said. “Taking an existing church building and the idea of putting a restaurant in it was sort of tweaking that notion that … I’m not walking into a church anymore.”

As Morrison learned more about the building’s connection to fugitive slaves, he could feel that same energy in the framework of the building — a spiritual connection, he said, that is felt in the atmosphere of the restaurant.

“I think it just brings a really cool vibe and good karma, if you will, to this space, that it was used as part of the Underground Railroad,” he said. “I’ve been here at all hours of the day and night, and I know some people talk about ghosts and those sorts of things, but I’ve only felt good vibes in this space.”

Morrison’s initial inspiration for running a Mexican restaurant came many years earlier, when he was a high schooler and tried salsa for the first time.

“I know, it sounds novel, but it’s funny,” he said. “At the time, literally the only things in the supermarket were maybe Ortega and Old El Paso. It was very new to us.”

As he and his high school friends experimented with preparing traditional dishes, he fell in love with the richness of the cuisine. While Morrison is not of Latinx heritage, his newfound love of spicy dishes paired with the cultural significance of Mexican food inspired him to make a career out of preparing the same dishes he had first been captivated by years prior.

Morrison specializes in what he refers to as “new Mexican cuisine,” a fusion that pays homage to the traditional methods of classic dishes while providing a modern twist.

“There are a lot of very traditional techniques and recipes and things that you have to understand if you’re going to play and do things off the beaten path a little bit,” Morrison said. “I do the best I can, and most often people walk away pretty happy.”

Shayne Cohen, sous chef at The Mission, has worked alongside Morrison for the past two years. What solidifies the restaurant’s stance as a staple in Syracuse’s food scene, he said, is the passion and devotion every member of their staff puts into the craftsmanship of the final product.

“We always have to be striving to learn something new and to be doing something better or in a different way, and I think that kind of just leads to a mutual respect between all of the people in the industry,” Cohen said. “These are all opportunities to learn and better ourselves.”

For Cohen, food is just as much a political act as it is a cultural one. Sharing a meal together, he said, is about more than breaking bread. It’s about cultivating an experience and generating a level of understanding into cultures unlike one’s own.

“Food is the way to start,” Cohen said. “If you want to start understanding somebody, eat their food.”

In recent years, prominent members of the food industry have started to look more critically into the people and identities that outline the values of an entire group of people. Both Morrison and Cohen highlighted the work of the late Anthony Bourdain in his CNN television series “Parts Unknown.”

“The basis for his whole thing wasn’t just about, ‘Hey, look at me eating your food.’ It was a gateway of really getting into the culture,” Morrison said. “Food is that thing that we all have in common. It brings us all together.”

The Mission is a restaurant whose history is a rich, complex reminder of its cultural significance — an attribute, Cohen said, it tries to generate for its customers each and every day.

“We try to garner that air of acceptance,” Cohen said. “Everyone is welcomed here. You can come here in your suit or you can come here in your pajamas, we don’t care.”

In traditional churches, the centerpiece of the building is its altar. But at the heart of The Mission, beneath a figure of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Morrison joins his staffers in the kitchen to begin preparations for that evening’s dinners.

Golden sunlight streams in through the windows, tinted orange by the stained-glass hues.

“It’s that time of day,” he said, smiling. “The rays are coming in.”

Cover photo by Molly Gibbs | Photo Editor