First Baptist Church (interior)
- Architects
- Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi Henry Hobson Richardson
- Year
- 1872
- Style
- Richardsonian Romanesque
- City
- Boston, MA
- Collection
- richardson romanesque
First Baptist Church, also known as Brattle Square Church, is home to a congregation founded in 1665 — one of the oldest Baptist congregations in America. After decades on Beacon Hill and a merger with two other congregations, it bought its current building at the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Clarendon Street in Back Bay in 1881 for $100,000. The building was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, with a sculptural frieze by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, better known as the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty.
the building
Bartholdi's frieze. The building pairs Richardson's Romanesque design with a sculptural frieze by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi — an unusual collaboration between a major American architect and the French sculptor who would go on to create the Statue of Liberty.
the style
The building is worked in Richardsonian Romanesque, the heavy masonry style that took its name from architect Henry Hobson Richardson himself, who was defining it in Boston during these same years.
More on Richardsonian Romanesquethe architect
Henry Hobson Richardson designed the building; the sculptural frieze was contributed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the French sculptor later famous for the Statue of Liberty — a rare direct collaboration between the two.
significance
The church's interior is a pending Boston Landmark under review by the Boston Landmarks Commission, and the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
nearby
- Trinity Rectory
- Trinity Church
- Church of the Covenant
- 500 Boylston Street
- New England Museum of Natural History
- Old South Church