The First Baptist Church is a historic

American Baptist American Baptist may refer to: * American Baptist Churches USA (ABCUSA), formed (as the Northern Baptist Convention) in 1907 * American Baptist Association, formed 1924 * American Baptist College, Nashville, Tennessee, formed 1924 by the National B ...

church at Magazine and River Street in

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...

within Central Square. In 1817 the church congregation was founded in the home of James Hovey.A brief history of the First Baptist Church in Cambridge: with the declaration of faith, the church covenant, and list of members
(Printed by J. Ford & Son, 1870) In 1844 several members of First Baptist Church left to found nearby Old Cambridge Baptist Church. First Baptist Church's current

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

building was constructed in 1881 to a design by

Hartwell and Richardson Hartwell and Richardson was a Boston, Massachusetts architectural firm established in 1881, by Henry Walker Hartwell (1833–1919) and William Cummings Richardson (1854–1935). The firm contributed significantly to the current building stock and ...

. It was added to 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 ...

in 1975.

Architecture

The First Baptist Church is set just south of the main intersection at the heart of Central Square, on a roughly trapezoidal lot bounded by River Street, Green Street, Magazine Street, and Franklin Street. The church building is roughly L-shaped, with its front facing north toward the square. The long main section of the building houses the sanctuary, and the rear section, extending a short way to the west, houses a parish hall, offices and other facilities of the church. The church is a tall single-story brick structure, with sandstone trim and decorative detailing in terra cotta, and has Gothic Revival styling. It has a gabled slate roof with a clerestory section near the top of the gable, with the rear section having a cross-gable roof. The slate is mainly gray-green, with bands of red. A tower rises at the northeast corner of the building, rising to an open belfry with lancet-arch windows at the third stage. Clock face sections with gabled tops interrupt the steeple, which is eight-sided, finished in slate. The church is the third to be built by the Baptist congregation, which acquired the property in 1819. The first two churches, built in 1819 and 1866, were both destroyed by fire.

References

External links

''A brief history of the First Baptist Church in Cambridge: with the declaration of faith, the church covenant, and list of members''
(Printed by J. Ford & Son, 1870) {{National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts Baptist churches in Massachusetts Churches completed in 1881 19th-century Baptist churches in the United States Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts Churches in Cambridge, Massachusetts National Register of Historic Places in Cambridge, Massachusetts Historic district contributing properties in Massachusetts 1817 establishments in Massachusetts Hartwell and Richardson buildings

Architecture

See also

References

External links