Second Church in Boston

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

The Second Church in Boston, now Ruggles Baptist Church, is a Colonial Revival church at 874 Beacon Street designed by the firm of Ralph Adams Cram and built in 1914. Its congregation, founded in 1649 as Boston's second Congregational church, had already turned Unitarian in 1802 before commissioning this building; in 1970 it merged with First Church in Boston and the Beacon Street building passed to the Ruggles Baptist congregation.

the style

Cram, best known for his Gothic Revival ecclesiastical work, turned here to Colonial Revival, drawing on New England's own meetinghouse tradition rather than the Gothic idiom that made his name.

the architect

Ralph Adams Cram was a major American ecclesiastical architect; this 1914 Beacon Street church, in Colonial Revival style, stands apart from the Gothic Revival churches for which he is best known.

significance

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 24, 2010.

nearby

Landmark Center 0.2 mi · Art Deco
Boston University Marsh Chapel 0.3 mi · 1950
Fenway Park 0.4 mi
Peter Fuller Building 0.4 mi · Neoclassical
Temple Ohabei Shalom 0.5 mi · Moorish / Mudéjar
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 0.7 mi · 1903

All 282 buildings in Boston