- Charles Street Meeting House
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The Former Charles Street Meeting House (Boston, Massachusetts) 
Charles Street Meeting House
Charles Street Meeting HouseGeneral information Architectural style Georgian / Colonial Town or city Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts Country United States of America Construction started 1804 Completed 1807 Cost ? Technical details Structural system Rendered masonry Design and construction Client The Third Baptist Church Architect Asher Benjamin Engineer ? The Charles Street Meeting House, is an early-nineteenth-century historic church in Beacon Hill at 70 Charles Street, Boston, Massachusetts. The church has been used over its history by several Christian denominations and is a good example of reuse and adaptive reuse, having recently been renovated into a mixed use complex heavily featuring office use.
Contents
History
19th century
Third Baptist Church
The church was built between 1804 to 1807 to the designs by noted American architect Asher Benjamin for the Third Baptist Church, which used the nearby Charles River for its baptisms. In the years before the American Civil War, it was a stronghold of the anti-slavery movement, and was the site of notable speeches from anti-slavery activists Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. Pastors of the Third Baptist Church included Caleb Blood (1807-1810), Daniel Sharp (1812-ca.1853)[1][2] and J.C. Stockbridge (1853-ca.1861).[3] The congregation was eventually "absorbed by the First Baptist Church."[4]
View of Third Baptist Church at water's edge, 1850First African Methodist Episcopal Church
The Baptist congregation sold the structure to the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1876. Pastors included William H. Hunter and J.T. Juniper.[5]
20th century
The building was later sold in 1939 to the Charles Street Meeting House Society. It was briefly an Albanian Orthodox church before the Society granted the building in 1947 to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities with the understanding that the society would convey the building to the Massachusetts Universalist Convention (Universalist Church of America) and keep restrictions on the building’s exterior.[6] It served as a Universalist Church of America church from 1949 to 1961, then Unitarian Universalist after consolidation from 1961 to 1978/1979. This was a Universalist experimental church.
In 1979, it was sold to a private owner.[7] At that time, the Society negotiated a more specific preservation easement with the owner. It was converted in the early 1980s by the architectural firm of John Sharrat Associates into four floors of offices with retail on the ground floor. The exterior was completely preserved.[8]
The Meeting House is part of the Boston Black Heritage Trail and located in the Beacon Hill Historic District, the nineteenth-century altered sanctuary was relatively intact but much of the rest of the interior held little architectural significance in comparison with the exterior. The National Park Service then permitted extensive vertical and horizontal internal subdivision provided that the developer incorporate some existing ornamental features.
See also
- Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church, congregation formerly housed in the Charles St. Meeting House (1876-1939)
References
- ^ Bowen's picture of Boston. 1838
- ^ Services at the fortieth anniversary of the installation of the Rev. Daniel Sharp, D.D.: as pastor of the Charles Street Baptist Church and Society, Boston, April 29, 1852. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1852
- ^ Bacon's dictionary of Boston. 1886
- ^ Bacon's dictionary of Boston. 1886
- ^ Bacon's dictionary of Boston. 1886
- ^ Historic Boston Incorporate. Religious Properties Preservation: A Boston Casebook, Adaptive Use of Properties. (Boston: Historic Boston Incorporate, 1991), p.10.
- ^ Mark A. Bower, “Putting Offices in the Sanctuary: Utilizing Rehabilitation Tax Credits for Adaptive Reuse of Religious Buildings,” Inspired, Mar-Apr 1989: p.4-6, 8, 16-17.
- ^ William C. Shopsin. Restoring Old Building for Contemporary Uses: An American Sourcebook for Architects and Preservationists. (New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1986), p.64-65.
- Maryell Cleary, ed. A Bold Experiment: The Charles Street Universalist Meeting House (Chicago: Meadville Lombard Theological School Press, 2002). ISBN 0-9702479-3-1
External links
Media related to Charles Street Meeting House (Boston) at Wikimedia CommonsCoordinates: 42°21′28″N 71°04′14″W / 42.3579°N 71.0706°W
Categories:- Asher Benjamin buildings
- Buildings and structures completed in 1807
- Churches in Boston, Massachusetts
- Beacon Hill, Boston
- Georgian architecture in Massachusetts
- Buildings and structures in Boston, Massachusetts
- United States church stubs
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