The First Universalist Church is a historic
Universalist Church building at 125 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 Romanesque church building was built between 1916 and 1923 to a design by
Ralph Adams Cram
Ralph Adams Cram (December 16, 1863 – September 22, 1942) was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partner ...
, and is the only example of his work in Somerville. 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.
It is currently owned by the Highland
Masonic
Freemasonry or Masonry refers to Fraternity, fraternal organisations that trace their origins to the local guilds of Stonemasonry, stonemasons that, from the end of the 13th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their inte ...
Building Association, and is the home of King Solomon's Lodge AF & AM, the builders of the
Bunker Hill Monument
The Bunker Hill Monument is a monument erected at the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill in Boston, Massachusetts, which was among the first major battles between the Red Coats and Patriots in the American Revolutionary War. The 221-foot (67 m) gran ...
.
Description and history
The First Universalist Church is located on the north side of Highland Avenue, opposite Trull Lane and the
First Unitarian Church. It has a roughly cruciform shape, with a long body oriented parallel to the street, with a square tower projecting at the right end of the front and a gabled projection at the left end. The exterior is primarily plain stucco, with trim details in brick and terra cotta. The front facade has round-arch windows in pairs, framed by brick trim with a white pilaster in between. These window bays are set apart by buttresses with brick caps. The main entrance is set recessed in a round-arch opening at the base of the tower. The tower has four stages, demarcated by string courses of terra cotta. The lower stages have round-arch windows in similar style to the body, and the top stage has an open belfry with similar round-arch openings. It is capped by a pyramidal roof.
The congregation acquired this site in 1915, and the church was built from 1916 to 1923 to a design by the noted ecclesiastical architect
Ralph Adams Cram
Ralph Adams Cram (December 16, 1863 – September 22, 1942) was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partner ...
, who produced a somewhat more Romanesque plan than the typical Gothical Revival work he is best known for. It was the last of several churches to be built along the stretch of Highland Avenue northwest of Somerville's civic area.
[
]
Former buildings
The congregation was established in 1854 as the First Universalist Society of Somerville. That same year local businessman and philanthropist Charles Tufts
Charles Tufts (July 16, 1781 – December 24, 1876) was an American businessman and philanthropist.
Biography
Tufts was born in Medford, Massachusetts, the son of Abigail and Daniel Tafts. He was a descendant of Peter Tufts, an early colo ...
donated to the new society a lot in East Somerville, at what is now Cross and Tufts Streets, two years after his larger land donation to what is now Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
. Money was raised for a chapel, and this building was completed in 1855. It was replaced by a larger building constructed in 1859-60. This in turn was destroyed in a fire in January 1868.[''History of the First Universalist Church in Somerville, Mass.'' (Somerville, MA: First Universalist Church, 1905)]
The congregation rebuilt the church, this time in brick, in 1869. They remained there until 1915. After the move, the former building was remodeled into a theatre, the Orpheum, by Nathan Hoffman. After the theatre closed in the 1950s, the building was used for warehouse purposes for many years. In 2001 the former church was renovated into a residential development now known as the Sanctuary Lofts.[David M. Guss, "Lost Theatres of Somerville," ''Marquee'' 38, no 1. (First Quarter 2006): 3-16.]
See also
*
References
External links
The historical records
of the First Universalist 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 ...
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, ...
.
{{National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Churches completed in 1923
20th-century Unitarian Universalist church buildings
Unitarian Universalist churches in Massachusetts
Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Masonic buildings in Massachusetts
Churches in Middlesex County, Massachusetts
Buildings and structures in Somerville, Massachusetts
Romanesque Revival church buildings in Massachusetts
Ralph Adams Cram church buildings
National Register of Historic Places in Somerville, Massachusetts