Arlington Street Church
- Architect
- Arthur Delavan Gilman
- Year
- 1861
- Style
- Italianate
- City
- Boston, MA
Arlington Street Church, completed in 1861 across from the Public Garden, was designed by Arthur Gilman and Gridley James Fox Bryant for a Unitarian Universalist congregation founded in 1729 as the Church of the Presbyterian Strangers. The congregation's earlier minister William Ellery Channing is considered the first major American Unitarian minister, and the church is counted among the most historically important buildings in Unitarian Universalism. On May 17, 2004, it was the site of the first state-sanctioned same-sex marriage in the United States.
the building
Tiffany windows. The main sanctuary holds 16 large-scale stained-glass windows installed by Tiffany Studios between 1899 and 1930, one of the more extensive Tiffany window programs in any American church interior.
Modeled on a London church. Gilman and Bryant designed the building to resemble James Gibbs' St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, adopting that church's portico-and-steeple formula for a congregation moving from downtown Boston into the newly filled Back Bay.
the style
The church blends Italianate and Georgian elements, following the Gibbs-derived St. Martin-in-the-Fields model of a classical portico beneath a tall steeple, imported here as the congregation relocated to its grand new Back Bay site.
More on Italianatethe architect
Arthur Delavan Gilman designed Arlington Street Church together with Gridley James Fox Bryant, modeling it on James Gibbs' St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London.
significance
Arlington Street Church is an individual Boston Landmark (BLC #9, designated April 25, 1978) and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. On May 17, 2004, it hosted the first state-sanctioned same-sex marriage in the United States.
nearby
- Berkeley Building
- New England Museum of Natural History
- Church of the Covenant
- Paine Furniture Building
- Armory of 1st Corps Cadets (interior)
- 500 Boylston Street