Rural parts of Vermont always surprises me with amazing old buildings. This white wood-frame church is known as the Highgate Springs Union Church, an 1877 edifice which effortlessly blends Victorian Gothic and Stick style details. The building became the village’s union church, providing a worship space for members of all denominations who on their own, could not afford the cost of building and maintaining a building. The small congregations eventually moved out and the church appears to now be largely unused beyond small events or weddings/funerals. I am glad to see it is kept up well at least!
Built in the Italian Renaissance Revival style by architects Rand & Taylor, the Sacred Heart Church in Newton Centre of 1899 reflects much of the lesser-known history of the affluent suburb of Boston. As Newton’s population nearly doubled between 1870 (12,800) and 1890 (24,000), many Irish Catholic residents who worked in the mills and factories of the Upper and Lower Falls areas of town began to move to the suburbs, taking jobs at households of the affluent class in Newton Centre, as cooks, maids, gardeners and more. Residents of Newton Centre wanted a Catholic Church closer to their homes and work, so they established their own congregation in 1890. As the congregation grew, it was obvious that a new church in Newton Centre would be needed to provide services there. Ground broke on the church by 1891, but it took nearly 10 years until the building was completed. Architect Bertram Taylor of the firm Rand & Taylor, and resident of Newton Centre, is credited with designing the large edifice, which is dominated by twin hipped-roof bell towers. The interior of the church has some of the most elaborate plaster work in the Boston area and stained glass windows lining the walls. Early Pastors of Sacred Heart included two who went on to important posts: Francis C. Spellman (1933-39) became Archbishop of New York; and Richard J. Cushing (1939-44) became Archbishop of Boston.
In the early 19th century, Head Tide was a bustling village within the Town of Alna, Maine, supported by mills at the dam, agriculture and apple orchards, boat building, fishing and forestry. As Head Tide grew in population, village leaders determined to build their own Congregational church so they would not have to travel the three miles to the 1789 Meeting House in Alna Center. The Head Tide Church in Alna, Maine was dedicated in November 1838 and sits on a hill overlooking the village. The Head Tide Church is a handsome rural Maine house of worship which exhibits a combination of Federal style, Greek Revival, and Gothic Revival elements in its design. The facade displays the outline of a Grecian temple front with its six pilasters and strongly accented triangular pediment. The Federal fan motif appears above the two facade windows as well as in the center of the pediment and the Gothic Revival influence is felt in the two pointed arch windows on either side of the church and in the simple pinnacle at the top of each corner of the belfry. The church is a high-style building for the rural Maine village and is kept very well by the community. The congregation disbanded, but the church remains an important part of the town and is rented for memorial services, events, weddings.
The Newport Congregational Church on Spring Street was built between 1855-1857 and serves the United First and Second Congregational parishes of Newport whose history began in the late 17th century. The building, designed by Joseph C. Wells a New York City architect, and redecorated on the interior in 1880 by John LaFarge, is an interesting and well-preserved example of the Romanesque Revival, brownstone churches of the mid 19th century. LaFarge had recently completed work on H. H. Richardson’s landmark Trinity Church, Boston, and sought to provide a more elaborate interior than he was able to in Boston. He produced twenty stained glass windows and a series of murals, which today, represent the only fully integrated ecclesiastical interior he produced. The congregation has shrunk in recent years and moved to nearby Middletown, but it’s vestry was committed to the preservation of La Farge’s work. The LaFarge Restoration Fund was established and since the 1990s, the nonprofit has spent $3 million on glass and mural restoration, architectural stabilization and systems upgrades for their former building. The building is used occasionally as an arts center.
Built in 1875, this large Gothic Revival church was built specifically to serve as a place of worship for the French Roman Catholic immigrants from Canada who began moving northern Berkshire County, Massachusetts, who were arriving to work in North Adams’ brickyards and textile factories. Before 1875, the Catholic community in the region had to make due with only occasional visits from a Vermont missionary. In 1871, Father Charles Crevier arrived in North Adams to take charge of the French flock and officially form the parish of Notre Dame du Sacre Coeur, with 750 new parishioners. Funding was acquired to purchase a property in town and erect a suitable church for the large (and growing) congregation. Architect James Murphy, a relatively unknown architect who specialized in ecclesiastical designs, furnished the plans for the church. After loss of industry and a declining population, the church closed in 2005, and the property was sold to the city of North Adams in 2008. The city faced repairing the church building as recently as 2016 with about half of the $100,000 budget coming from the city directly. Its future is unknown, but the town hoped to sell it for a renovation into a hotel or other use to activate the downtown area.
Located next door to the Middlebury Town Hall, the Middlebury Congregational Church has a very similar history to its Classically inspired counterpart. The congregational church here was established in 1791, less than a year after a separate Middlebury ecclesiastical society was granted and the first church here was erected in 1794. Decades later, a more traditional and larger church was desired by the congregation, so they had a Greek Revival style church built in 1839. Nearly 100 years later, the church (and adjacent original town hall building) burned in a large fire in April 1935. Undeterred, the congregation hired architect Elbert G. Richmond, AIA (1886-1965), who as a young man worked in the New Haven office of J. Frederick Kelly, Connecticut’s first and most famous restoration architect. The present building is a near-replica of the mid-19th century church building, and even has a bell that was recast from pieces of the old bell that crashed through the building during the earlier fire. Talk about rebirth!
In 1891, the Baptist Society of Stoneham, Massachusetts unveiled that it had acquired funding and approved the plans for its first purpose-built church building in town. The organization met in a shared chapel in town since its founding in 1870. The new church would be unique in the Boston suburb as the only in town to be of the Queen Anne/Shingle style. A prominent site on South Main Street was acquired and work began in 1892 to erect the new house of worship. The design of the church is credited to the firm of L.B. Volk & Sons, a firm who specialized in church buildings with commissions all over the country. The church is complex in plan and combines brick and shingle siding in its construction with a prominent two-story tower with rounded corners and stained glass rondels (round windows).
Almost at the southern, most remote tip of the Blue Hill Peninsula in Brooklin, Maine, I was stunned to come across this enchanting chapel. Completed in 1900, the Beth Eden Chapel is a small wooden frame building that appears to have been the first religious facility erected in the Naskeag area of Brooklin. Although it was erected by the Methodist Episcopal Church of Brooklin, the building was dedicated to the use of all Christian sects who wished to worship in the more remote section of town. Interestingly, the vernacular church employs some late 19th-century detail including the shingled flared siding and triangular motif. The chapel appears to remain open for summer months.
Litchfield, New Hampshire remained a rural agricultural town on the eastern banks of the Merrimack River from its founding by white settlers until after WWII when it rapidly became a bedroom community for nearby NH cities and Boston. The area’s Presbyterian residents needed a place to worship, separate from the more common congregationalists, and they built this Gothic and Greek Revival style church near the geographic center of town, a stone’s throw from the Merrimack River. The building features lancet windows, tracery, and a two-tiered belfry with classical pilasters and Gothic finials at the tower.
The Congdon Street Baptist Church on College Hill is extremely significant as part of the rich history of Providence. Its origins began in 1819, when Moses Brown, an abolitionist, industrialist and member of the Brown Family (who profited on the institution of slavery) gave land to “the people of color” of Providence for a schoolhouse and meeting house. The original building stood slightly north of the present structure and it was built in 1821. The structure provided the first schoolhouse for Black children in Providence. In 1869 the building was torn down, without the approval or knowledge of the congregation by white neighbors because “its proximity displeased them”… Eventually the congregation arranged an exchange of lots with one of the church’s neighbors and architects Hartshorn & Wilcox were commissioned to design the new church building. Hartshorn was the successor of Thomas A. Tefft and this church echoes many of his designs in the Italianate style. The new building was completed in 1875 at the cost of $16,000. It was renamed the Congdon Street Baptist Church. The church has since 1875 served as an important landmark and gathering place for many Providence’s Black residents past and present.
After the Civil War, the Village of Versailles’ Congregational Church was seeing less attendance and its deathknell was a fire which destroyed the building in 1870. That next year, a vote was taken by members of the Congregational Church as to a preference for their denomination. A majority voted for Methodist Episcopal and asked the New England Conference to appoint a Pastor for the new church. Funds were gathered and this church was opened in 1876, in the Italianate and Victorian Gothic styles. The building sits upon a raised brick foundation with small windows on the facade. In 1887, the Versailles church was linked with Baltic and Greenville (Norwich) the following year.
One of the grandest and high-style buildings in Sprague’s Baltic Village is the St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church. As Irish, French- Canadians and Poles settled in the village of Baltic, they formed a substantial Catholic community. This congregation was founded by 1860 and a modest church building was erected at that time. As the town’s Catholic population grew, the Archdiocese decided to fund a new church building. This Romanesque Revival style building was constructed in 1911 and it must have made a big statement when it was completed. The building is one of the most unique church designs that I have seen in Connecticut.
When the town of Franklin, Connecticut was still a part of Norwich, it was known as West Farms. The residents there had a meetinghouse built there as it took too long to travel into Norwich for town meetings and church services. The first meetinghouse was built in 1718 on what became Meetinghouse Hill. Decades later, the primitive building was replaced by a newer structure. That building was replaced two more times until the present Congregational Church was erected in 1863. The building takes cues from the Greek Revival church designs of decades prior and looks to the future with Italianate detailing and steeple. There remains a small, but active congregation here to this day, who maintain the old building very well!
Located next to President Calvin Coolidge’s birthplace and the Coolidge Family store, the Union Christian Church of Plymouth Notch in Vermont stands as another of the village’s well-preserved buildings with direct ties to the former president. The church was built in 1840 as a modest, vernacular Greek Revival building with a two-stage tower and originally was the town’s meetinghouse. The building was dedicated as a Congregational church in 1842. President Coolidge attended services here as a child and later when visiting his hometown as Governor of Massachusetts and President of the United States. In 1942, the building became a union church for all congregations.
The United Methodist Church of Nantucket stands prominently at the top of Main Street on land was obtained from Peleg Mitchell in 1822. Construction on the site began in 1823 with the massive structure originally built with a pyramidal hip roof of enormous timbers brought to the island on whaling vessels. In 1840, the roofline was amended with the present gable roof, constructed over the original hip roof. The church is a highly significant example of Greek Revival architecture on the island and a more rare example of the temple-front form seen there. Deferred maintenance threatened the building to the point that in 1995, the building was listed as one of the most endangered buildings in Massachusetts. A restoration was undertaken funded by private contributions and the Massachusetts Preservation Project Fund, preserving the building for another 200 years.
Buildings of New England 