Conventual Church of St. Mary and St. John

Architect: Ralph Adams Cram
Style: Romanesque Revival
City: Boston, MA

The Conventual Church of St. Mary and St. John is a Romanesque Revival church in Cambridge, built in 1936 to designs by Ralph Adams Cram for the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, an Episcopal monastic order. Cram modeled the building on twelfth-century ecclesiastical forms from France's Burgundy region.

the style

Late in his career, Cram set aside the Gothic Revival idiom he was famous for to reproduce the round-arched Romanesque forms of twelfth-century Burgundy, giving this monastery church an older, more austere character.

the architect

Ralph Adams Cram was a major American ecclesiastical architect; this 1936 Cambridge monastery church, modeled on French Romanesque precedent, is a later work in his career.

significance

Featured in a 1941 architectural magazine and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

nearby

Mary Fiske Stoughton House 0.2 mi · Shingle Style · 1882
Christ Church 0.3 mi · Georgian · 1760
Smith Campus Center 0.3 mi · Brutalism · 1966
Oliver Hastings House 0.3 mi · Greek Revival · 1844
Massachusetts Hall 0.3 mi
Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site 0.3 mi · Georgian · 1759

All 282 buildings in Boston