The former First Unitarian Church is a historic church building at 130 Highland Avenue in

Somerville, Massachusetts Somerville ( ) is a city located directly to the northwest of Boston, and north of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a total population of 81, ...

. The stone church was built in 1894 for a Unitarian congregation. It was designed by Hartwell & Richardson and is a good example of

Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revival style incorporates 11th and 12th century southern French, Spanish, and Italian Romanesque ...

design. The building presently (2022) houses the Mission Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Building history

The congregation that built this church was established in 1844 and built its first church in Central Hill Park in the same year. The new building was designed by architect Richard Bond of Boston and built by Louis C. Edgerly of Somerville. It was completed in 1845 and in 1846 the congregation called its first pastor, John Turner Sargent, an associate and defender of

Theodore Parker Theodore Parker (August 24, 1810 – May 10, 1860) was an American transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words and popular quotations would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincol ...

, the transcendentalist.''Somerville, Past and Present'', ed. Edward A. Samuels and Henry H. Kimball (Boston: Samuels and Kimball, 1897) The building was destroyed by fire in 1852 and replaced in 1853-54 with a new church designed by architect

Thomas W. Silloway Thomas William Silloway (August 7, 1828 – May 17, 1910) was an American architect, known for building over 400 church buildings in the eastern United States. Silloway was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and raised a Methodist by his paren ...

, which burned in 1867. The third and last church in Central Hill Park was completed in 1869. In 1893 the City purchased the building as part of the site for the new Somerville High School, which was begun the same year. The fourth church, a block up Highland Avenue, was begun in 1894 to a design by Hartwell & Richardson, who also designed the new high school and the

Broadway Winter Hill Congregational Church The Broadway Winter Hill Congregational Church is a historic church building at 404 Broadway in Somerville, Massachusetts. Built in 1890–91 to a design by Hartwell and Richardson for a Congregationalist congregation founded in 1865, it is one ...

. They designed the building in the then-popular

style, named for

Henry Hobson Richardson Henry Hobson Richardson, FAIA (September 29, 1838 – April 27, 1886) was an American architect, best known for his work in a style that became known as Richardsonian Romanesque. Along with Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, Richardson is one ...

, who was not related to the architect of the Somerville church. A

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

design was also proposed by Cram, Wentworth & Goodhue but was rejected. The new church was completed in 1895, after which the old building was demolished. In 1930 the Second Unitarian Church of Somerville, organized in 1891, merged with the First Unitarian Church. In 1975 the congregation was dissolved and in 1976 the building was purchased by the Mission Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, an Apostolic Pentacostalist church, which continues to occupy it in 2022. The building 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 1989.

Architecture

The First Unitarian Church building is located on the south side of Highland Avenue, at its western corner with Trull Lane, about one block west of Somerville's cluster of civic buildings on Central Hill. The church is a handsome stone structure, with a tall and steeply pitched gable roof, and a square tower at its right front corner. Entrances are located on the north-facing front facade at either end of the gable, which has a bank of five rectangular stained-glass windows below three tall round-arch stained glass windows in the gable. The tower rises through two levels to a belfry which has tripled round-arch louvered openings on each side, with a fourth stage housing a multi-faced clock with stone piers at the corners rising to pyramidal caps. The tower is capped by a slate pyramidal roof. The building is a fine local example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style for which its architects were well known.

Stained glass

The church features extensive stained glass, including several memorial windows. The largest of these, in the center of the Highland Avenue facade, depicts Christ healing the sick and was dedicated in memory of Columbus Tyler (1805-1881) and Mary Elizabeth (Sawyer) Tyler (1806-1889), long-time supporters of the church. This is flanked by windows representing the Angel of Charity and the Angel of Faith, dedicated to Rufus B. Stickney and Nathan and Sally Tufts, respectively."Somerville's New Church" in ''Boston Daily Globe'', September 7, 1895, 12.

Gallery

File:First Congregational (Unitarian) Church, Somerville, Massachusetts.jpg, The congregation's former building in Central Hill Park, completed in 1869. File:First Unitarian Church, Somerville, Massachusetts.jpg, The former First Unitarian Church, photographed soon after completion in 1897. File:Somerville MA First Unitarian Church tower.jpg, The church tower, photographed in 2009.

References

External links

Mission Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ web site

of the First Unitarian Church in Somerville are in the Andover-Harvard Theological Library at

Harvard Divinity School Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, gov ...

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, ...