Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Unitarian Universalist Church and Parsonage
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1975. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“Medford owes its first settlement to the influence of Governor Cradock and Governor Winthrop. The first gentleman was the richest individual attached to the New England Company; and he gave his money with the freedom of an enthusiast.”
History of the Town of Medford, Middlesex County, Massachusetts : from Its First Settlement, in 1630, to the Present Time, 1855 (1855). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1975 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.75000281- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
In writing this History, it has been my -wish to secure Medford such territory in time as its acres are territory in space. The gathering of these annals has been too long delayed. Time, moth, and rust have done thenfatal work on many valuable materials ; and some gentlemen, who felt a deep interest in their native town, have died without leaving any manuscript testimonies. When the history of New England shall be written, the true data will be drawn from the records of its towns. Now, therefore, in humble imitation of those States in our Union which have contributed each its block of granite, marble, or copper to the National Monument at Washington, I ask leave to offer Medford's historical contribution to the undecaying pyramidic monument which justice and genius will hereafter raise to the character and institutions of New England.
The records of the first forty years are lost. I have reproduced them, as far as I could, from documents in the General Court relating to our earliest history ; from several monuments of the first settlers, which are yet standing among us ; from authentic traditions which were early recorded ; and from collateral histories of the neighboring towns. To find the lost, and remember the forgotten, seems to be the province of the local annalist. From the moment I reached the first town-records of Medford (1674), I implicitly followed those excellent guides. Where I could save space by abbreviations, without altering the sense, I have occasionally done so in my quotations, and have used our modern orthography. The spirit of antiquarian research, now beginning to show itself, will lead to the discovery of many facts concerning the early history of Medford which are beyond my reach. These may soon render necessary a new history of the town ; and I hope it may be undertaken by a person whose ability and leisure will enable him to do far greater justice to the subject than has been within my power.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 78 fires within 5 miles of Unitarian Universalist Church and Parsonage between
2015 and 2020, burning about 101 acres in total. None started naturally. 28 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Arson/incendiarism
28
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
21
Debris and open burning
13
Recreation and ceremony
10
Smoking
3
Misuse of fire by a minor
2
Equipment and vehicle use
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 1,800 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Unitarian Universalist Church and Parsonage between 1898 and
1975: 800 Animalia, 549 Plantae, 385 Fungi, 28 Protozoa, 17 Bacteria, 12 Chromista, 9 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A B Seymour, A B. Proper and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
15 workings within 5 miles of Unitarian Universalist Church and Parsonage: 7 plants, 5 past producers, 2 producers, 1 unknown.
9 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Iron, Lead, Gypsum-Anhydrite. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Medford, the town this property stands in, in 20 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 14 thunderstorm wind, 3 flood, 1 flash flood, 1 hail.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
Trees were downed on Corey Street and Riverside Avenue. A telephone pole was downed onto Massachusetts Avenue and wires on Lawrence Street were downed, all by thunderstorm winds.
At 12:52 AM EST, a large tree was down on a car and laying across Auburn Street in Medford. At the same time, a tree was reported down on Summer Street and a large tree was down on George Street.
In Winchester, a large tree was down on a house, which took the chimney off the house on Alden Lane. A tree was down on Cambridge Street by the boat club. A tree was down on wires on wires on the 30 block of Allen Road. Trees and wires were down on Ledyard Road. A tree was down on the 70 block of Lawson Road.
In Medford, multiple trees were reported downed. In Somerville, a tree was down on a house on Vernon Street and a large branch was down on power lines on Walker Street.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
4,081 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Medford Unitarian-Universalist Church and Parsonage comprises an ecclesiastical building and the Reverend David Osgood Parsonage. The church is a picturesque stone and wooden Gothic Revival structure, irregular in plan with gable-ended facade, corner bell tower and intersecting ridge-roofed wing. The Parsonage is a two-story late Georgian frame building with pedimented entranceways and well-crafted interior woodwork. Both buildings face south on High Street and are divided by Powderhouse Road. The Medford Unitarian-Universalist Church, built between 1893 and 1894, is late Gothic Revival reflecting the influence of English country church design. Situated on the west corner of High Street and Powderhouse Road, it was constructed on the rebuilt stone foundation of a previous church.
The main entrance is situated within an elaborate Gothic archway topped by a stained glass lancet light and located at the base of an imposing square crenellated tower at the building's southwest corner. Simpler secondary entranceways are situated at the southwest corner and on the east elevation, each under a wooden ridge-roofed porch. A porte-cochere, no longer in use, is still situated at the southwest corner of the church. The building material up to the eaves is Mason, New Hampshire granite ashler with Dorchester, Massachusetts pink stone quoins and trim and Amherst, Massachusetts gray-colored buff-stone window caps and sills. The north elevation is shingle covered.
Colorful leaded stained glass windows in rectangular and lancet shapes surround the first story and are divided at the side elevations by stone buttresses. A steep wooden intersecting ridge roof covered with slate surmounts the church walls. A large tripartite stained-glass lancet window dominates the facade's wooden shingled gable. A'-similar window is located on the east side of the rear wing's shingled gable. Two wooden lancet air vents are located on each side of the bell tower near its péak.
BUILDER/ARCHITECT J. Merrill Brown, church The Medford Unitarian-Universalist Church and Parsonage are significant as an important part of Medford's architectural and religious heritage. The two buildings represent a very good example of late Gothic Revival design and a well preserved late Georgian house. The church itself is the fifth meetingChouse of the First Parish of Medford; and the Reverend David Osgood Parsonage is a tangible reminder of his prominent role in Medford and vicinity from 1774 until his death in 1822. The present church building was designed by J. Merrill Brown, a Boston architect noted in 1892's Boston of To-Day for his "many handsome and picturesques residences" in the city's suburbs.
Brown's commissions are of special interest in light of his architectural training in the offices of Henry H. Richardson and Peabody and Stearns. This church is Medford's most imaginative example of late Gothic Revival design characterized by an unusually picturesque silhouette and shingled gables. The fine quality of the masonry is attributable to the Dodge Brothers, prominent church builders in suburban Boston during the 1890's. / The Osgood Parsonage is a rare example of its period in Medford and therefore of great architectual value to the community. ? The frontispieces around the entrances are particularly noteworthy.
The importance of the house in Massachusetts' architectural history is strengthened by the survival of the building's original cost sheet of 1785 which was published rw tesa sengeteaened in the Medford Historical Register, (volume 23, pp. 38-40). References made herein include costs for the house's land, labor, frame, boards, shingles, clapboard, laths, brick, lime, "brads of all sorts," nails, painting, masonry, carpentry and so forth totaling approximately 600fexcluding painting and papering the rooms, completing a fence, building an outhouse and digging a well.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 75000281, 17 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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