An interesting article appeared in the Manchester Courier in June 1901 and it described St Luke's and its history.
The foundation stone for the church was laid in 1839, a year before Queen Victoria's coronation, and the church is described as having been the largest around and visible for many miles around, so that it gained the name 'the church on the hill'. In the 1830s there were many wealthy residents in the area, and grand houses such as Broughton Hall, Crumpsall Hall, etc, and the parishioners included many relatives of William Gladstone, as well as wealthy Manchester merchants. Alms Hill was open farm land then and the rectory was built on some of that land and was grand enough to accommodate visiting bishops.
The church organ was a hugely expensive and magnificent one, built in London in 1840, and the church held monthly organ voluntaries which were high class musical performances attended by the local wealthy residents. On April 21st 1847, the then renowned Hamburg musician Felix Mendlessohn did indeed play the organ at St Luke's for an audience of local dignitaries and parishioners and to great acclaim. His visit was sponsored by local wealthy resident Mr C, Souchay (possibly another Jewish convert to Christianity?). Almost every other place he played now has a blue plaque. His appearance there clearly had a big effect on the town and a firm of piano and organ sellers in Strangeways named their premises Mendelssohn House. Even today, the restaurant at one of Manchester' Airports hotels is named Mendelssohn's.
I don't know whether St Luke's was ever listed - it should have been - though it would have made little difference to its fate, since the sumptuous library in Cheetham village, paid for by public subscription, is listed yet was sold off to a consortium who are allowing it to fall into decay so they can apply to demolish it and build commercial premises on the site. Doubtless that is what will also happen to St Luke's, given the attitudes of those in local government to Manchester's fine history and architecture.
As for Mendelssohn, he too suffered a fate above and beyond his early death, in being reviled as a Jew (he was of that race but of the Christian faith) during the anti-Semitic times of the late 19th to mid 20th century in Germany, and his works fell out of favour and, indeed, were banned under the Nazis. When ever I listen to Mendelssohn's The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave), inspired by his trip to Scotland during that 1840s tour of Europe which also took in Manchester, I wonder how such genius could ever have been derided, and indeed how could St Luke's, Manchester's most magnificent and historic church, have been so slighted.