The Alna Meetinghouse is a historic

meeting house A meeting house (meetinghouse, meeting-house) is a building where religious and sometimes public meetings take place. Terminology Nonconformist Protestant denominations distinguish between a * church, which is a body of people who believe in Chr ...

Maine State Route 218 State Route 218 (SR 218) is a state highway in Lincoln County, Maine, Lincoln County, Maine. The road connects U.S. Route 1 in Maine, U.S. Route 1 (US 1) and Maine State Route 27, SR 27 at Wiscasset, Maine, Wiscasset and Maine Sta ...

in Alna Center, Maine. Built in 1789, it is one of the oldest churches in the state, with a virtually intact interior. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1970.

Description

The Alna Meetinghouse is located on the west side of Maine 218, a short way north of Alna Cemetery and about south of the road's

Sheepscot River The Sheepscot River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed June 22, 2011 river in the U.S. state of Maine. Its lower portion is a complex island estuary with connections to ...

crossing. It is set close to the road, and faces south. The building is a -story wooden structure, with a side gable roof and exterior of clapboards and wooden shingles. It has no tower, and a gable-roofed entry vestibule and stairhouse projects from the center of the five-bay front facade. The entrance is flanked by pilasters and topped by an entablature and cornice. Balconies surround three sides of the interior and are supported by hand-hewn pillars. The original

box pew A box pew is a type of church pew that is encased in panelling and was prevalent in England and other Protestant countries from the 16th to early 19th centuries. History in England Before the rise of Protestantism, seating was not customary in chu ...

s are still in place, as is the original pulpit with a sounding board hung from the ceiling. The roof is supported by massive hand-hewn beams, measuring in thickness. The area that is now Alna was originally incorporated as part of a larger township called Pownalborough (now

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...

) in 1760. Organized as that town's North Precinct, it was incorporated as New Milford in 1794 and renamed Alna in 1811. This church was built in 1789, and saw active use until 1876.

External links

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine Churches completed in 1789 Churches in Lincoln County, Maine 1789 establishments in Massachusetts National Register of Historic Places in Lincoln County, Maine 18th-century churches in the United States