First Unitarian Church
- Architect
- Hartwell and Richardson
- Year
- 1894
- Style
- Richardsonian Romanesque
- City
- Boston, MA
- Collection
- richardson romanesque
The stone church at 130 Highland Avenue in Somerville was built in 1894 to a design by Hartwell & Richardson, a good example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. It was the fourth building erected for a Unitarian congregation founded in 1844, after earlier churches on the congregation's original Central Hill Park site burned twice or were displaced when the city bought the land in 1893 for the new Somerville High School. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and presently houses the Mission Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
the building
Fourth church on the fourth try. The congregation's first church, built in Central Hill Park in 1844 to a design by Richard Bond, burned in 1852; its 1853-54 replacement by architect Thomas W. Silloway burned again in 1867; a third church completed in 1869 lasted until the city bought the site in 1893 for Somerville High School, finally pushing the congregation a block up Highland Avenue to the present 1894 building.
Link to Theodore Parker. The congregation's first pastor, called in 1846, was John Turner Sargent, an associate and defender of the transcendentalist minister Theodore Parker.
the style
Hartwell & Richardson's 1894 design is considered a good example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture, built in stone for a congregation that had already lost two previous wooden churches to fire.
More on Richardsonian Romanesquesignificance
The church is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its original congregation moved on, and by 2022 the building had become home to the Mission Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
nearby
- First Universalist Church
- C. C. Crowell House
- George Loring House
- House at 16–18 Preston Road
- Wright House
- Stickney Building and Masonic Apartments