Congregational – Page 6 – Historic Buildings of Massachusetts

Union Meeting House, Storrowton (1834)

Now part of the collection of historic buildings that make up Storrowton Village at the Eastern States Exposition grounds in West Springfield, the Union Meetinghouse was originally built jointly by four religious denominations in Salisbury, New Hampshire, in 1834. The Meeting House was moved from the Smith’s Corner neighborhood of Salisbury to Storrowton in 1929. The pulpit came from another New Hampshire town and the 1851 bell is from a church in Neponset, Massachusetts.

After the First Congregational Church in Deerfield became Unitarian, a group of orthodox Congregationalists separated to make their own church. In 1838, they constructed the “White Church.” The differences between the two churches were resolved in 1931 and in 1957, the White Church was purchased to become part of Historic Deerfield. It is now the White Church Community Center.

The Religious Society of North Hadley was organized in 1831, having separated from the First Congregational Church of Hadley. The meeting house was built and dedicated in 1834 and the steeple was added in 1854.

Boston’s Park Street Church was built in 1809-1810 on the site of the 1738 town granary (the Old Granary Burying Ground is next door). The church‘s architect, Peter Banner, adapted the steeple from a design by Sir Christopher Wren. Solomon Willard carved the wooden capitals of the front columns. Either because of the “fire and brimstone” sermons of its Congregational preachers or the fact that gunpowder was stored in its basement during the War of 1812, the corner of Tremont and Park Streets, where the church is located, came to be known as “Brimstone Corner.” The church has had many firsts: the first Sunday School in America was founded here in 1817; the first missionaries to be sent to Hawaii started from here in 1819; the first prison aid society was founded here in 1824; William Lloyd Garrison made his first public anti-slavery speech here in 1829; and Samuel Francis Smith’s hymn, America (“My Country ‘Tis of Thee“) was sung for the first time on the church‘s steeps by Park Street’s Children’s Choir in 1831. Park Street Church is on Boston’s Freedom Trail.

The first Puritan settlers arrived in Springfield from Roxbury in 1636 and organized their church congregation in 1637, with George Moxon as their first minister. The first meetinghouse was built on the southeast corner of Court Square in 1645. It had a shingled roof and two turrets, one used for a bell and the other to guard against attacks by Indians. The second meeting house replaced the first in 1677. The third church building, built in 1752, had a steeple with a clock and a Rooster weathervane, one of three shipped to the colonies in 1750 (the other two went to First Church in Newburyport and South Church in Boston). The weathervane continued to be used on the fourth church building, built in 1819. The church’s most recent organ, built in 1958, was restored in 1997. The First Congregational Church continued to be used for services until the end of 2007, when declining membership led to the closure of the church and the disbanding of the congregation. In March, the city purchased the church, weathervane and organ, but many were concerned when the congregation auctioned off a number of historic items in April. The congregation eventually repurchased the valuable items and donated them to the Springfield Museums Association.

The current meeting house of the First Congregational Church of Hadley, on Middle Street, was built in 1808. The congregation dates back to 1659. The original meeting house was not built right away: although the town had planned to construct it in 1661, work did not begin until 1663 and it took seven years to complete. “Probably during this time meetings were held in the home of some leading church member.” By 1713, “The little old first edifice was falling in pieces,” and the Town decided to build a new church, completed in 1714. This was later replaced by the current building at the same location.

Built in 1729, Boston’s Old South Meeting House was the largest building in the colonial town. The congregation began in 1669, when it separated from Boston’s First Church (becoming the Third Church of Boston). In the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the American Revolution, citizens would gather in the Old South Meeting House to debate and argue in the aftermath of events like the Boston Massacre. On the night of December 16, 1773, over 5,000 colonists, angered over the tax on tea, met at Old South and after hours of debate, Samuel Adams gave a secret signal which began the famous Boston Tea Party. During the war, occupying British troops took revenge for the Tea Party by ripping out the church‘s pews and using the building as a riding stable. They also set up a bar on the first balcony. The church continued to be used as a house of worship, but after it was nearly destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1872, the congregation built the New Old South Church at Copley Square. In danger of being torn down, pioneering preservation efforts led to the restoration of the building, which has been a museum and historic site since 1877. It is also a stop on the Boston Freedom Trail. ~~The steeple has been replaced twice, after storms in 1804 and 1954.~~