Church of the Covenant
- Year
- 1867
- City
- Boston, MA
The Church of the Covenant rose on Newbury Street in 1867, one of the first congregations to relocate into the newly filled Back Bay. Built largely with money donated by industrialist Benjamin Bates, founder of Bates College, it was designed by Richard M. Upjohn in Gothic Revival using rough Roxbury puddingstone. Its 240-foot steeple made it the tallest building in Boston for nearly half a century, until the Custom House Tower surpassed it in 1915.
the building
The steeple. At 240 feet, the church's steeple was tall enough to overtop the Bunker Hill Monument, and Oliver Wendell Holmes called it the one steeple in Boston that seemed to him "absolutely perfect."
Tiffany interior. Inside, the church's distinctive decoration is largely the work of Tiffany & Co., a rare instance of the Gilded Age glassmaking firm's craftsmanship surviving intact in a Boston sanctuary.
the style
Upjohn built in the Gothic Revival style using rough Roxbury puddingstone, at his own insistence raising "a high gothic edifice ... which no ordinary dwelling house would overtop" — a brief he fulfilled literally, since the steeple became the tallest point in the city.
the architect
Richard M. Upjohn was the son and partner of Richard Upjohn, the era's leading American church architect; this Back Bay commission let the younger Upjohn build his own emphatically vertical Gothic statement in his father's tradition.
significance
A National Historic Landmark and National Register-listed building, the church held the title of Boston's tallest building from its 1867 completion until the Custom House Tower rose in 1915.
nearby
- New England Museum of Natural History
- 500 Boylston Street
- Berkeley Building
- Trinity Rectory
- First Baptist Church (interior)
- Arlington Street Church