Massachusetts Churches

Trinity Episcopal Church of Wrentham // 1872

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Overlooking the Town Green in Wrentham, Massachusetts, the Trinity Episcopal Church of Wrentham stands as the town’s finest example of Victorian Gothic architecture and the community’s oldest Episcopal church. Episcopalians in Wrentham first began worshipping in 1863 and in less than ten years, quickly grew in numbers from just two members to so many that a church building was needed to house the congregation. The site on East Street was purchased and architect, Shepard S. Woodcock, was hired to furnish plans for the new building. Completed in 1872, the Victorian Gothic design features all of the hallmarks of the style, including the steeply pitched roof, pointed arch windows and entry doors, buttresses, and towering steeple.

Wrentham Congregational Church // 1834

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The Wrentham Congregational Church is the oldest house of worship in the suburban community, and the fourth consecutive meetinghouse for the congregation at the town center that was originally established in 1692. The frontier town grew slowly as a largely agricultural community and three houses of worship were built nearby the town common until 1833, when it was decided that a church worthy of its historic congregation be built. It is not clear who designed the Greek Revival church, but timbers were transported to town in 1834 for the new edifice which was completed that year. Over the following century, the church was expanded and modernized, all-the-while retaining its historic character. The four-stage steeple toppled during the New England Hurricane of 1938, and was rebuilt. The congregation remains active in the community and is a visual landmark at the town center.

Hopedale Unitarian Church // 1898

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The Hopedale Unitarian Church, also known as the Draper Memorial Church, is located in the former industrial village of Hopedale, Massachusetts, and is one of the finest examples of the Neo-Gothic style in the state. The church was funded by brothers George Albert and Eben S. Draper of the Draper Corporation, the largest employer in town, offering to build the new edifice as a memorial to their parents, George and Hannah Draper. The church replaced an earlier, wood-frame church, built on the site in 1860 by supporters of Adin Ballou, a founder of the Hopedale Community, a utopian community that eventually failed. The Drapers hired Boston architect, Edwin J. Lewis, an active Unitarian who had designed several churches around New England by this time. His plan was “English Gothic of the Perpendicular period” made of Milford granite with Indiana limestone trimmings and a roof of green slate. At the interior, roof trusses were left exposed “as in the old English Parish churches” with oak finishes and flooring and memorial stained glass windows by prominent artists. The church remains a visual and historical landmark for the community with an active congregation who preserve the significant building.

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.

St. Mary of the Assumption Catholic Church, Brookline Village // 1880

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St. Mary of the Assumption church was the first Catholic Church established in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1852 when a congregation of Catholics began to congregate to worship together at the old Lyceum Hall. The congregation primarily consisted of Irish immigrants who settled in Brookline, where they often found work at the many large estates and building the new branch railroad in town, but desired a true house of worship close to their homes. By 1853, a modest wood-frame Gothic Revival style church was built in the Village, but was quickly outgrown. In 1873, the pastor of the congregation, Irish-born Rev. Lawrence Morris (1845-1900) began purchasing land at the corner of Harvard Street and Linden Place to establish a new church, large enough to comfortably fit the congregation and various church-related buildings. In 1880, the firm of Peabody & Stearns was hired to furnish plans for the Victorian Gothic edifice in brick and brownstone. Although the church was designed in 1880, it was not dedicated until 1886, and at this time, Pope Leo XIII sent a chalice to the Parish in honor of the completion of this church, the first in America to be named Saint Mary of the Assumption.

First Parish Church, Wayland // 1814

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The First Parish Church of Wayland, Massachusetts, is an iconic church that displays the typical early 19th-century meetinghouse form with Federal-style elaboration. Built in 1814, the church is two-stories with a five-bay gabled-front structure with a projecting enclosed portico of three entrance bays, and a four-stage bell tower that rises above the façade. Today known as Wayland, the town was originally called East Sudbury, after it split away from the western parish in 1780. In 1835, members of town meeting voted to rename East Sudbury “Wayland” in honor of Dr. Francis Wayland, a temperance advocate, abolitionist, and then president of Brown University. The First Parish Church of Wayland was built by Andrews Palmer of Newburyport, who used an Asher Benjamin design. The bell was cast by Paul Revere and Sons and first lifted into the bell tower in 1814. The property also includes the historic, twelve-bay horse/carriage sheds where parishioners would “park” their horses and carriages while attending services.

Swedenborgian Church of Lancaster // 1881

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Built in 1881, the Swedenborgian Church of the New Jerusalem in Lancaster, Massachusetts, is a handsome Victorian-era chapel that has been well-preserved for nearly 150 years. The Queen Anne/Shingle style church was designed by architect Francis Ward Chandler of the firm, Cabot & Chandler, for the local Swedenborgians in Lancaster, some of which likely spent summers in Lancaster from Boston. The membership of the church dwindled in the early 20th century, and the congregation sold the church to a local women’s social group, the Current Topics Club in 1923. The women’s club met in the old church and maintained the building for nearly a century until the building sold to private owners in about 2007, who converted it to a residence, preserving the unique architecture we still see today.

First Church of Lancaster // 1816

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Built in 1816, the First Church of Lancaster is one of just two extant church buildings designed by famed American architect, Charles Bulfinch, and is said to be one of the finest churches in the Federal style in the United States. The fifth meetinghouse of the Unitarian First Church of Christ in Lancaster, this building was constructed of local brick, slate, and lumber from master-builder, Thomas Hearsey. Hearsey is said to have modified Bulfinch’s design, which had proposed one tall center arch flanked by two lower arches to reflect the unequal heights of the three vestibule doors behind them; instead going with three, identical arches. Other than this change, the church remains substantially as originally built, even without artificial lighting or central heat inside. Besides the iconic arched portico, the two- stage brick tower topped by a beautifully proportioned wood cupola surrounded by Roman Ionic columns, and fronted by a giant arcuated portico, is especially noteworthy. The congregation, which dates back to 1653 as a Puritan congregation was the first parish established in Central Massachusetts and remains active to this day.

First Parish Church, Kingston // 1851

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The original Congregational Church of Kingston was part of the established, tax-supported church of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and was built in 1718, after present-day Kingston established itself as Plymouth’s North Parish. The church was replaced in 1798 with a more substantial building with two steeples. In 1833, when the separation of church and state was finalized in the Commonwealth, two new religious societies formed in Kingston and established churches. The 1798 church, which had been built as the only church in town, was now too large for its diminished population and suffering from structural difficulties. In the spring of 1851, the 1798 church was taken down, and the present church, the third on the site, was constructed. The church blends Greek Revival and Italianate styles, both popular for ecclesiastical buildings of its time, and the structure looks much like it did when built 175 years ago. The congregation here is Universal Unitarian.

Westborough Unitarian Universalist Church // 1850

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The Unitarian Universalist Church of Westborough, Massachusetts is architecturally significant as an excellent example of a ecclesiastical building in the Greek Revival style, but it is also significant historically as it tells a richer history of the community and New England as a whole. The Congregational Church has its roots in the first church in Westborough, established in 1724 under Reverend Ebenezer Parkman. The Religious Freedom Act of 1811 and the official separation of church and state in 1825 encouraged a diversity of religious views in Westborough and a branching out from the first church both spiritually and since churches needed new houses of worship. As a result, the local church in Westborough split due to differing beliefs, with the Congregationalists building a church and a few years later, the Unitarians building this church, both in variations of the same architectural style. The UU Church in Westborough was built by 1850 and was expanded as the congregation grew. The building remains nearly identical to when it was built except for the steeple, which in 1921, was in such bad repair that it had to be removed. Less than a decade later in 1930, member Isadore Forbes donated the funds to have the steeple rebuilt and a bell installed.