Round Church

Old Round Church // 1812

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The Old Round Church in Richmond, Vermont, was built in 1812 on the village common to serve the town’s many congregations as a union church. The building is a master-work of housewright William Rhodes, who documented its construction in his journal and is a vernacular, yet grand Federal period church. While known as the Round Church, the building is actually a sixteen-sided hexdecagon with shallow angle cuts to create the rounded form, so the term round church sounds a little better than the Old Hexdecagon Church! Fifty feet in diameter, the two-story church rises to a hipped roof which is surmounted by a two-stage octagonal belfry with a bellcast cap and weathervane. Within a few decades of the church’s opening, the founding denominations began to move out, building their own houses of worship, and in 1880, the Old Round Church reverted to the Town of Richmond and continued in use as the town’s meeting hall until 1973, at which time safety concerns forced its closure to the public. The Richmond Historical Society was formed in 1973, shortly before the church had to be closed and in 1976, the town deeded the church to the society, who then gathered funds to restore the building. The Old Round Church remains one of the most unique architectural designs in Vermont and is always a treat to drive by in all seasons. The beloved building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 2000, one of just 18 in Vermont.

Church of All Nations // 1975

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One building in Boston that has always perplexed me is this round church building. It echoes Eero Saarinen’s MIT Chapel in Cambridge, but is much heavier and plain. After over an hour of researching, I finally found out some history behind it! The church was constructed in the South Cove Redevelopment area, an urban renewal program run by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (now BPDA) as a sort of “slum” clearance near Chinatown. The Church of All Nations was founded in the South End in 1917, housed in a Gothic Revival chapel that was seized by eminent domain for the Massachusetts Turnpike Extension and demolished in 1963. The congregation met in temporary quarters on Arlington Street until the new church was constructed in 1975. Records show that the congregation hired famed Modernist architect Bertram Goldberg as early as 1967 to design a new chapel, set in a new public park. The original plans called for a square building with a massive “steeple” incorporated as the entire roof. For some reason (possibly funding and changing demands for the church), the final design was a little more mundane. The cylindrical church is clad in dark glazed brick with a cross raised in the brickwork. The church suffered from a dwindling congregation in its location, and now appear to rent out the building. One of my favorite local architecture firms Touloukian Touloukian, Inc., re-imagined the site as a new residential tower. It would be one of the few beautiful new buildings in Boston in the past decade or two. Can we please make this happen?!