Churches in Boston

Church of the Advent // 1878

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The Church of the Advent in Beacon Hill, Boston, is a landmark example of a church designed in the Victorian Gothic style with strong English influence. The congregation, established in 1844, purchased a large corner lot at Brimmer and Mount Vernon streets on the newly made filled land west of Charles Street in Beacon Hill Flat, to construct their new church. In 1875, John Hubbard Sturgis, a Boston architect and parishioner, began designing the red brick with sandstone-trimmed church set on a corner lot with dominant corner tower and octagonal steeple. Construction began in phases beginning in 1878 and took years until the steeple was completed in 1888. Before its completion, John H. Sturgis died and his nephew, Richard Clipston Sturgis, oversaw the completion of the church, which became somewhat of a memorial to his late uncle. Following the completion of the Church of the Advent, Sturgis’ widow, extended family and clients donated a major portion of the interior art, stained glass windows, and furnishings. The polychromatic exterior in red and charred brick mixed with sandstone trim appears to have been inspired by his designs for the original Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1876, demolished in 1911.) The Church of the Advent in Boston is one of the finest ecclesiastical buildings in New England and is the master-work of one of America’s great architects.

First Baptist Church in Newton // 1888

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The Boston area has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Richardsonian Romanesque style buildings, due in part to its namesake, Henry Hobson Richardson lived and worked locally. One of my all-time favorites is the First Baptist Church in Newton Centre. The church was designed by architect John Lyman Faxon, who was clearly influenced by Richardson. The First Baptist Church in Newton is among the oldest Baptist congregations in the state. Baptists were recorded as living in Newton as early as the 1720’s, but growth was slow and marked by persecution. In 1780, a congregation was assembled and the next year a rough, unplastered barn like meeting house was begun alongside Baptist Pond (now Crystal Lake). Fifteen years later, the congregation was finally able to afford a stove; twenty one years later, in 1802, the structure was enlarged. In 1836, the congregation constructed a larger meeting house in a more convenient location, the corner of Beacon and Center Streets. The second building was remodelled in 1856 and 1869 and finally was moved from the site to make way for the present church, the third meeting house, dedicated in November 1888. The First Baptist Church is undergoing some work at the exterior at the time of the photo, but the amazing brownstone trim and the winged creatures on four sides of the octagonal tower still shine!

St. Andrew R.C. Church – Bethel AME Church // 1921

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During the rich Arts and Crafts movement of Boston, dozens of churches and their associated buildings were constructed using principles of the movement, which sought to incorporate English design with hand-crafted detailing, moving away from the mass-produced features and architecture seen in the Victorian-era/Industrial Revolution. After WWI, the Forest Hills neighborhood of Boston saw a massive influx of residents and housing construction, leading to the desire for a new neighborhood church. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese commissioned Boston architects Timothy O’Connell and Richard Shaw, who specialized in ecclesiastical design to build the new church. Opened in 1921, the building is constructed of random ashlar walls with buttresses, lancet windows, and a large rose window, all nods to Gothic architectural precedent. Demographic changes and declining church attendance led the parish, for the first time in 1995, to accept aid from the archdiocese to meet expenses. Unable to justify keeping the church open, the Archdiocese sold the church to Reverend Ray Hammond and the Reverend Gloria White-Hammond, a husband-and-wife pastoral team, who started a local African Methodist Church (Bethel AME Church) in the neighborhood.