Pilgrim Memorial Church and Parish House is an historic church and parsonage at 249 Wahconah Street in

Pittsfield, Massachusetts Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Berkshire County. Pittsfield� ...

. The church was designed by H. Neill Wilson, and was completed in 1897. It is a good local example of

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 ...

and Romanesque architecture, and was the first church built to serve the mill workers in the city's north end. The property 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 2005. The present church congregation is Presbyterian.

Architecture and history

Pilgrim Memorial Church stands in a mixed-use area north of downtown Pittsfield, on the west side of Wahconah Street south of its junction with Pecks Road and Pontoosuc Avenue. It is a modestly scaled stone structure, built out of local fieldstone and covered by a steeply pitched gable roof. The gable ends are slightly parapeted, and there are projecting gable sections at the northern end. The east-facing projection houses the main entrance, and has projecting stone buttresses. The south-facing sanctuary facade has three tall Gothic windows, the center one rising into the gable. The church's construction was an outgrowth of planning by local church leaders to provide services closer to where the city's workers lived. Plans for this site were drawn by local architect H. Neill Wilson, which included a chapel (seating about 300), and a larger sanctuary seating 450. Of the two, only the smaller chapel was ever built. The parish house was built in 1927, and was also designed by Wilson. Unlike the church, which was built in granite, the parish house is a single story tan brick building in a more utilitarian style.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pilgrim Memorial Church And Parish House Churches completed in 1897 19th-century churches in the United States Churches in Berkshire County, Massachusetts Buildings and structures in Pittsfield, Massachusetts Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Berkshire County, Massachusetts Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts

Architecture and history

See also

References