Major Bibliographical References First Church of Jamaica Plain Boston, Massachusetts Previous documentation on file (NPS): preliminary determination of individual listing(36 CFR67) has been requested previously listed in the National Register previously determined eligible by the National Register designated a National Historic Landmark recorded by Historic American Buildings Survey # recorded by Historic American Engineering Record # 10.
Geographical Data Acreage of property 1.4 acres Quad- Boston South UTM References A 1,9 32,55,50 Zone Easting Scale- 1:25000 4686120 Northing * See continuation sheet Primary location of additional data: N State historic preservation office Other State agency Federal agency X Local government University Other Specify repository: Mascachusetts Historical Commission & Boston Landmarks Commission LIELL See continuation sheet Verbal Boundary Description The nominated property conforms to the City of Boston's Tax Assessor's parcel #1801. See continuation sheet Boundary Justification The bounds of the nominated property is the lot historically and presently associated with the First Church of Jamaica Plain. See continuation sheet 11.
Form Prepared By name/title Betsy Friedberg, NR Director/MHC with Catherine Seiberling organization Massachusetts Historical Commission date March 1988 street & number 80 Boylston Street .telephone (617) 727-8470 city or town Boston state Massachusettszip code 02116 OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 NPS Form 10-900e (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page -1 First Church of Jamaica Plain Boston, Massachusetts adequate resources to proceed with a district nomination in the near future. However, that situation has changed, and a district nomination is under preparation for the FY87 grant work program.
The First Church of Jamaica Plain has witnessed the growth of Jamaica Plain from country town to city suburb and its site is of long historic association both to its immediate environs and to the City of Boston. The present structure was erected on the site of the original meeting house of the Third Parish of Roxbury, built in 1769, as a result of a fissure in the Roxbury church organization. The meeting house for the Congregational Society of the Third Parish Church of West Roxbury, built in 1769, was initiated at the request of Mrs. Susanna - Pemberton with the financial backing of her husband, the need for a third parish within West Roxbury. Built on a parcel of land left to the town of Roxbury by John Eliot (famous as clergyman and "Apostle to the Indians") upon his death in 1690, the structure was built at the cost of $4,200 paid in part by the sale of 34 pews at $83.33 a pew.
Among the church incorporators in 1772 were the Pembertons, Eleazer & Nathaniel Weld, and Joshua Loring, all prominent and wealthy citizens of the village. Loring was a renowned Tory, maintaining status of captain in the British army until he fled Boston during the Revolutionary War. His grand Georgian house (Loring-Greenough house), was framed in England and considered to be among the finest in Roxbury. It was seized after the Revolution and sold by public auction to the Greenough family in 1784. The original meeting house (on the same site as the existing structure) was about half the size of the present day church with dimensions of fifty eight x thirty eight feet, length running east to west with the entrance at the east facing Eliot Street.
Of timber-frame structure and puritan vintage, it possessed a bell from "the new brick church" in the North End presented in *tmber-Frane sarecture and 1783 by John Hancock, a summer resident of Jamaica Plain. The bell was replaced several times. The meeting house was not only a religious edifice and community gathering place, but served as haven during the Revolution, acting as hospital for American troops, for town meetings during the Siege of Boston, and for sessions of the General Court in 1778. A parsonage existed adjacent to the property, a gift of Joshua Loring, and was occupied until 1854 when it was sold and removed to a nearby site (the building is non-extant). continued NPS Form 10-000 (8-06) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number 8 Page2 OMB Approvel No.
1024-0018 First Church of Jamaica Plain Boston, Massachusetts The graveyard was consecrated in 1785 and enlarged in 1825. It includes at least twenty-four tombs and many graves with few interments made after 1848 because of the consecration of Forest Hills in the same year. iron railing was erected arouna the cemetery and considerable landscaping undertaken. In addition to local Revolutionary War veterans, two pastors of the Congregational Society, William Gordon, D.D. (pastor from 1772-1786) and Thomas Gray, D.D. (1793-1843) are buried here, as well as many of the church incorporators and local citizens. In 1843, a committee was formed to evaluate the structure of the old meeting house- Further action was not taken until 1851 when a more substantial "Building Committee" addressed the concerns of altering or rebuilding the existing structure.
The committee reported that "the welfare of the parish, the prosperity of the Sunday School, and the comfort and convenience of the Society will be promoted by the increased accomodation afforded by a neatly and economically arranged church" [Church History, P. 53]. In 1853 a contract was signed for $21,800 (actual building cost was to reach $32,224.19) which Bu idng o5 tor co re included the cost of a new bell, organ, and iron fence. Nathaniel J. Bradlee was hired as architect, William 1 C. Poland, contractor, William R. Huston, carpenter, and Obadiah F. Adams, stone mason. The relationship of N.J. Bradlee with the Building Committee is not clear, however, significant facts are known. George F. Weld was a principal member of the Building Committee and Weld's daughter Julia was married to Bradlee by the Reverend Grindall Reynolds in 1856 (pastor of the church from 1848-58).
Whether or not Bradlee received the commission because of his involvement with the parish and relationship with Julia Weld, or whether his subsequent marriage was the result of his commission is not known. If Bradlee was a member of the parish (he was born in Roxbury and resided at 65 Highland Street from 1871 until his death), he may have had considerable voice and control of the significant alterations to the tower and church interior in 1872. The corner-stone of the new church was laid June 6, 1853 and a box of documents and memorabilia placed within. The new church was dedicated in June of 1854 and seems to have warranted less significance and publicity than the cornerstone dedication. The deliberation within the parish over the necessity of a new structure had been arduous within the community.
Just prior to the construction of the new church, the old meeeting house was moved across Eliot Street (on the future site of Eliot Hall, built a year later in 1855) and remodelled as a stable. It burned to the ground in May of 1855, a rumoured incendiary act of vandals opposed to the new church construction and reduced status of their meeting house. continued OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 NPS Form 10-000-e (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number-8 Page 3 First Church of Jamaica Plain Boston, Massachusetts In April of 1862, the Congregational Society decided to change their legal name and it was voted that "the corporate name be changed to the First Unitarian Society of Jamaica Plain.
Because of objections to the sectarian use of the word "Unitarian" and parish sentiment for their congregational roots, in 1864 the parish decided on the name of "the First Congregational Society of Jamaica Plain". This name both acknowledges the churches religious origins and the increased understanding of Jamaica Plain as its own civic entity...Eventually the church became more commonly known as the First Church of Jamaica Plain. During these post-civil war years, the church prospered simultaneously with Roxbury's incorporation into the City of Boston and subsequent boom of Jamaica Plain as a "streetcar" suburb. The church records of 1868 indicate ownership of the 113 available pews and a handsome surplus in the treasury. The First Church of Jamaica Plain has never known a more prosperous time as it had in the late nineteenth century.
In 1888, another building committee was formed to determine the cost of a parish house. Prior to this, the church had leased Eliot Hall for parish uses. An appeal for funding in the parish raised the requisite $20,000 within six weeks. The cornerstone was laid in 1889 and work completed by 1890. The architect is unknown. The First Church of Jamaica Plain is one of Bradlee's few excursions into the Gothic style. Bradlee was twenty-four at the time of this commission and the church is not only among his earliest works but also is the first church commission that he received (he later designed five other Boston churches) and only one of two of his church designs that are extant (the other, the original South Congregational Church at 15 Union Park Street in the South End, built in 1862 in the Italianate style, is presently a Greek Orthodox church and has been altered significantly).
Bradlee was born in 1829 in West Roxbury, educated at the Chauncy Hall School, and at the age of seventeen began as apprentice to architect George M. Dexter. He served as draftsman with Dexter's firm for more than ten years and began his own practice upon Dexter's death. Bradlee, if not a member of the Ecclesiological Movement himself, would certainly have been influenced by its fervor and architectural practices. Boston's first dose of the Gothic Revival in church building was in Charles continued OMB Approvel No. 1024-0018 NPS Form 10-900- (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number8 Page 4 First Church of Jamaica Plain Boston, Massachusetts Bulfinch's Federal Street Church of 1809 (destroyed in 1859), his only Gothic experiment.
However, this church was essentially a Federal meeeting house with Gothic flourishes. Solomon Willard's Church of St. John the Evangelist (1830) Bowdoin Street, Boston, and George Dexter's Old Fitchburg Railroad Station (1847) Causeway Street, Boston, a massive battlemented structure on which Bradlee may have worked, were most likely similar influences. Most of these buildings utilize granite in its "rustic" or rockface form, a practice of the Ecclesiologists and clearly used by Bradlee at the First Church of Jamaica Plain. The essence of Bradlee's original design remains despite the renovations of the tower and church interior in 1872 and 1893. It is a structure of restrained Gothic dignity, reflecting the contemporary rage of the English parish church revival, adhering to the tenets of the Ecclesiological movement in mid-nineteenth century American church design.
Bradlee's contribution to Boston's architectural fabric was most significant, particularly after the Great Fire of 1872. He designed over 500 buildings in the city including Back Bay townhouses, several residences in Jmaica Plain, and a vast number of commercial structures. After 1868, his firm's average number of commissions jumped from seven to eighteen a year and in 1872 Bradlee took on two partners (Walter T. Windslow and George H. Wetherel1) who contined the firm after his death in 1888.
Among Bradlees s most significant architectural works are the old New England Mutual Life Insurance Building (1873) in the grand style of the French Renaissance Revival and prominently sited at Post Office Square (razed in 1946), the 0ld Boston & Maine Railroad station at Haymarket (non-extant), the Rialto Building on Devonshire Street, the Baker Chocolate Factory in Dorchester, and Gray's Hall at Harvard College. Many of Bradlee's residential commissions in the Back Bay and West Roxbury are still extant, in addition to many commercial buildings. His clients were varied, his commissions profuse, and his use of style eclectic. In addition to his architectural vocation, Bradlee was involved in a number of civic activities. In 1867, he was one of nine founding members of the Boston Society of Architects, serving as treasurer for three years.
He was director and trustee of numerous boards, insurance,railroad, and manufacturing companies and even ran an unsuccessful campaign for Mayor of Boston in 1876. continued OMB Approvel No. 1024-0018 NPS Form 10-900 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number _8 Page -5 First Church of Jamaica Plain Boston, Massachusetts Potential archaeological resources of the First Church site contain data that provide a broad, historical context for the building itself.
These may include: 1) the foundations of the 1769 meeting house which may provide information on its orientation, dimensions, and architectural details, 2) gravestone fragments significant to parish history, geneaology, and gravestone scholarship, and 3) 19th-century deposits from around the First Church building and parish house whichmay provide information on parish activities. NPS Form 10-000- (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number - Page L OMB Approvel No. 1024-0018 First Church of Jamaica Plain Boston, Massachusetts Bradlee, Nathaniel J. "Plans for the First Church of Jamaica Plain" 1854, volume 2: 135-188. Collections of the Boston Athenaeum. Drake, Francis S. The Town of Roxbury: Its History and Antiques. Roxbury, MA: 1878. Ernst, Ellen L.
The First Congregational Society of Jamaica Plain, 1769-1909. Jamaica Plain, MA: 1909. First Church of Jamaica Plain. Church Archives (letters, ledgers, and assorted documents): 1700s-1950. Gray, Thomas. Half Century Sermon at Jamaica Plain. Boston, MA: 1842. Morse, Robert M. First Congregational Society of Jamaica Plain. Boston, MA: George H. Ellis Co., 1917. Reynolds, Grindall. A Discourse Preached on the Occasion of Leaving the 01d Meeting House at Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, MA. Boston, MA: Joseph G. Torrey Press, 1853. Seaver, Fred. The Founders and Incorporators of the Third Parish Church in Jamaica PTain. Jamaica Plain, MA: 1917. Stanton, Phoebe B. The Gothic Revival and American Church Architecture: An Episode in Taste, 1840-1856. BaTtimore, MD: John Hopkins Press, 1968.
00% ELIOT 149) 4931 3000 4449 3743 3300 3300 3020 2210 HAGAR 2013 1B1B 5775 *3331 FIRST CHURCH OF JAMAICA PLALIV 6 Centre Street 1" = 100' Boston Redevelopment Authority, 1976 (property indicated by cross-hatching) 16° STREE SOsAT 167 2 3186 a 6349 750 66211 9 740 CEMETARY HALL ELLIOT 8000 9826 12 a25' 14,851 754 ;5033 .502 4469 65,000 769 8/96 2 REENOUGH [4715 90as 3960 STREET '8, STREET 6371 3836 15,012 4089 15,733 193 78,450 78,450 5509 4173 5856 B0T 462° STREET SOL DIERS MONUMENT BOI TENNIS COURT 803 16107 3792 SOUTH 49,907 9750 MUNICIPAL BUIL DING 10,220 790 196 HATHAWA 3350 189 3500 3500 3403 Black line indicates boundary of "Potentially Eligible Area" for district nomination to the National Register of Historic Places ) 5870 3613 49,907 BOSTON PUBLIG LIBRARY BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY PLAIN PLAIN BR.
JAMACIA BRANCH -SEDGWICK SI- A IS BAÍAIIB 5711 15 5945 36 40 773- 3455 122 DGWICK 35 Norrr "4"1 TS': 4609 (NP8 Form 10-900a Wationa i Park Oepiartment of the interior National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number Page OMB Approvel No. 1024-0018 SUPPLEMENTARY LISTING RECORD NRIS Reference Number: 88000955 First Church of Jamaica Plain Property Name N/A Muitiple Name Date Listed: 07/15/88 Suffolk County MA state This property is listed in the National Register of Historic Places in accordance with the attached nomination documentation subject to the following exceptions, exclusions, or amendments, notwithstanding the National Park Service certification included in the nomination documentation. for Signature - f the Keeper 2-2-59 Date of Action Amended Items in Nomination: Criteria considerations: Criteria exception G was inadvertently checked.
Criteria exception D is applicable to the property for the significance of the contributing cemetery. This information was confirmed with Betsy Friedberg, National Register Coordinator, MASHPO, by telephone. DISTRIBUTION: National Register property file Nominating Authority (without nomination attachment) 88000955 WASO Form - 177 ("R" June 1984) UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR NATIONAL PARK SERVICE NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES EVALUATION/RETURN SHEET auvaud First Church of Jamaica Plain Suffolk County MASSACHUSETTS Subu vn- MAY 3 / 1998 L. resubmission nomination by person or local government owner objection appeal Substantive Review: - sample J request Jappeal Working No. Fed. Reg. Date: Date Due: - 8/30/88-7/15/88 Action: KACCEPT - 7-15-88 _ RETURN.
_REJECT- Federal Agency: - DNR decision Reviewer's comments: Hiskoricalyd and Sorhic peoival inpactaut 18th-centeu.com./criteria. accepk A xC curch noted for archiitedtenal unpatance. Discipline Acl Lesfugal Wiskon Date 7/15/88 - - see continuation sheet Nomination returned for: _ technical corrections cited below _ substantive reasons discussed below 1. Name 2. Location 3. Classification Category Ownership Public Acquisition Status Accessible Present Use 4. Owner of Property 5. Location of Legal Description 6. Representation in Existing Surveys Has this property been determined eligible? 7.
Description yes - no Condition -excellent good fair deteriorated ruins unexposed Check one - unaltered -altered Check one -original site I moved date Describe the present and original (if known) physical appearance - summary paragraph completeness clarity alterations/integrity dates boundary selection 8. Significance Period Areas of Significance-Check and justify below Specific dates Builder/Architect Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) summary paragraph completeness 18 YAM clarity applicable criteria justification of areas checked relating significance to the resource context relationship of integrity to significance justification of exception other 9. Major Bibliographical References 10. Geographical Data Acreage of nominated property Quadrangle name UTM References Verbal boundary description and justification 11. Form Prepared By 12.
State Historic Preservation Officer Certification The evaluated significance of this property within the state is: national state _local State Historic Preservation Officer signature date title 13. Other Maps Photographs Other Questions concerning this nomination may.be directed to _ Signed Date .
Phone: GPO 918-450 Comments for any item may be continued on an attached sheet FIRST CHURUH OF JAMAILA PLAIN BOSTON, MASSACWSETTS photographed by CAnOL KENNEDY 1986 BOSTON LANOMARKS COMMISSION BOSTON, MA VIEN: LOOKING NOATH AT FIRST CHURCH (trom Monument SQuARE) Photo 1 of 4 FIRST CHUACH OF JAMAICA PLAIN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS Photogrephed by: CAROL KENNEDY BOSTON LANDMARKS COMMISSION BOSTON, MA VIEN: DETAIL OF FRONT ENTRY (looking north) Photo 2 ot 4 FIRST CHURCH OF JAMAICA PLAIN DOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS PHOTOURAPHEO BY: CAROL KENNEDY (1986) BOSTON LANOMARES COMMISSION BOSTON, MA JIEW: DETAIL DF PARISH HOUSE (looking south) Photo 3 ot 4 FIRST CHURCH OF JAMAILA PLAIN BOSTON, MA PHOTOGRAPHED BY : CAROL KENNEDY (1986) BOSTON LANDMARKS COMMISSION BOSTON, MA VIEW: NORTH ELEVATION OF PARISH HOUSE SHO MASSING OF STRUCTURE AND CEMETARN (C. 17 IN FORF GROUND (tacing southwest).
PHOTO 4 o+ 4 COMMISION® * May 27, 1988 Carol Shull National Register of Historic Places Department of the Interior National Park Service P.O. Box 37127 Washington, DC 20013-7127 Dear Ms. Shull: Enclosed you will find the nomination forms for the following properties: There are three properties in Boston: Eliot Hall; 7A Eliot Street First Church of Jamaica Plain; 6 Eliot Street Greek Orthodox Cathedral of New England; 520 Parker Street Haverhill, Intervale Factory; 402 River Street Lincoln, Woods End Road Historic District; 68 Baker Bridge Road, 1, 5, 9, and 10 Woods End Road Lowel1, Merrimack-Middle Streets Historic District (Boundary Increase); Merrimack, Middle, Prescott, Central, and Market Streets; A. Hocum Hosford Building HPCA# 10283MA Vestry Building HPCA# 10207MA D. L.
Page Building HPCA# 1081MA Quincy, Massachusetts Fields School; Rawson Road and Beach Street; HPCA# 0570-84-MA Massachusetts Historical Commission, Valerie A. Talmage, Executive Director, State Historic Preservation Officer 80 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02116 (617) 727-8470 Office of the Secretary of State, Michael J. Connolly, Secretary They have been voted eligible by the State Review Board and have been signed by the State Historic Preservation Officer. Owners were notified of pending State Review Board consideration 30-75 days before the meeting and were afforded the opportunity to comment. No comments have been received to date. Sincerely, Betay Friedherg Betsy Friedberg National Register Director Massachusetts Historical Commission BF/es Enclosure MAY 3 | 1988
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