St. Anne Church is a historic church at 58 Church Street in
Berlin, New Hampshire
Berlin ( ) is a city along the Androscoggin River in Coös County in northern New Hampshire, United States. It is the northernmost city in New Hampshire. The population was 9,425 at the 2020 census, down from 10,051 at the 2010 census.
It ...
, United States. It is the church for Good Shepherd Parish within the
Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester
The Diocese of Manchester la, Diocensis Manchesteriensis is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in the region of New England in the United States, comprising the entire state of New Hampshire.
It is a suf ...
. St. Anne Parish was founded in 1867, and was Berlin's first Roman Catholic congregation. It was merged with Guardian Angel Parish, St. Joseph Parish, and St. Kieran Parish in 2000 to form Good Shepherd Parish. Its building, constructed in 1900, is an important local example of
Romanesque architecture
Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of medieval Europe characterized by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque style, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 11th century, this lat ...
, and 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 1979.
Architecture and history
St. Anne's stands north of Berlin's central business district at the northeast corner of Pleasant and Church streets. It is a roughly rectangular red brick structure, with a long gabled roof and towers flanking the south-facing front facade. The towers are identical in their lower levels, with tall round-arch windows at the lower level and smaller round-arch windows at a higher level. Their corners have brick quoining, and rise to a corbelled brick cornice, above which the treatments differ. The left tower has an open square belfry with round-arch openings, and is topped by a steeple; the right tower is topped by a truncated steeple topped by a statue of
Saint Anne
According to Christian apocryphal and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's name and that of her husband Joachim come o ...
. The interior of the building is richly decorated with carved wood and plaster ornamentation.
St. Anne's was established in 1867, and was the first Roman Catholic congregation in the community. Its first church, a wood-frame structure, was built in 1882. In 1899 it was moved and adapted for use as a parish school.
[ The present church was designed in 1900 by Archibald I. Lawrence, a local architect.][''Engineering News'' 3 May 1900: 144.] It was built by M. H. Roy, a contractor from Lewiston, Maine
Lewiston (; ; officially the City of Lewiston, Maine) is List of cities in Maine, the second largest city in Maine and the most central city in Androscoggin County, Maine, Androscoggin County. The city lies halfway between Augusta, Maine, August ...
; the identities of the artisans who created its interior are not known. By the 1970s Berlin's Roman Catholic congregations had grown to four, with St. Anne's principally serving its French-American population.[ The parishes were merged in 2000.
]
See also
*
References
External links
St. Anne Church of the Good Shepherd Parish
at ''Berlin New Hampshire History''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Anne Church (Berlin, New Hampshire)
Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in New Hampshire
Roman Catholic churches in New Hampshire
Churches in Coös County, New Hampshire
Churches in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester
National Register of Historic Places in Coös County, New Hampshire
Churches in Berlin, New Hampshire