The Church of St. John the Evangelist, on Bowdoin Street in Boston, was built in 1831 for the congregation of Rev. Lyman Beecher, father of Harriet Beecher Stowe. The congregation began at a church on Hanover Street, called the Hanover Church, built in 1826. After the church burned in 1830, the congregation built and consecrated the Bowdoin Street Church. Typical of early New England Gothic Revival churches, the design of the building has been attributed to Solomon Willard, architect of the Bunker Hill Monument. In 1831, Lowell Mason, famous composer of hymns, became choirmaster at the church. Rev. Beecher left his church in Boston in 1832, to become the first president of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. The church became the Church of the Advent (from 1863 to 1883) and then the Mission Church of St. John the Evangelist under the auspices of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, an Anglican monastic order. The church has been a Parish Church in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts since 1985.