Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. 17 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1893.
From the record
“Mark's Methodist Church is a historic church building at 90 Park Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. The church cornerstone was laid on April 9, 1892.”
Wikipedia article St. Mark's Methodist Church (Brookline, Massachusetts), CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 342 National Register listings published here for Norfolk County · listed in 1976 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.76000268- 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.
What happened here
An account from the chapter on Brookline town. The inset identifies its exact
source book and publication year.
"T shall be able to begin to travel home slowly in about 10 days, and shall, with the blessing of God, soon see you all. After being wounded I walked back to my tent, and in about an hour had only one arm, a circumstance which does not afflict me, my dear father, and must not you. But let us both thank God that he has so formed us that you have lived almost all your life happy & respectable, notwithstanding the loss of an eye, and I may spend the remainder of my life in the same manner with the loss of a limb, of all the most conveniently spared.
Fisher's Hill, sometimes called Henshaw Hill, is two hundred and forty feet high, and is near the corner of Brighton and Boylston Streets, has a fine broad top, from which the view of the surrounding country is exceedingly elegant, and on account of the eleva- and on the southerly side of the old Boston reservoir. The prospect from this hill, like all the hills in Brookline, is fine, but quite limited in comparison with many The north side of this is covered with residences, and there are more fine locations here to be found.
Harbor. larly circuitous that in passing from Dover to Sherburne over its bed in a straight line to its estuary or outlet is fourteen miles, while, taken by the serpentine course of its water, it measures thirty-eight and into the " Back Bay," sometimes called ' Charles River Bay," the centre of the stream forming the boundary line between Roxbury (Boston) and Brookline. The early settlement of the locality called " Muddy River" was named from the fact that this river was naturally muddy, owing to its peculiar location. itants there were two landings on this stream, known as "Cotton Landing" and " Aspinwall's Dock," where bricks and wood were landed. In order to a proper understanding as to how these docks were of use, direction, it empties into Muddy River near the works of the Brookline Gas Company. its rise near W. B. Cowan's farm and the vicinity of Warren Street, running in a northerly direction, and between the old reservoir belonging to the city of
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 28 fires within 5 miles of St. Mark's Methodist Church
between 2003 and 2020, burning about 328 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 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
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
14
Recreation and ceremony
7
Smoking
3
Arson/incendiarism
2
Equipment and vehicle use
1
Debris and open burning
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 12,664 specimens
collected within 10 miles of St. Mark's Methodist Church between 1810 and 1975: 5,207 Plantae, 3,871 Fungi, 3,115 Animalia, 193 Protozoa, 179 Chromista, 66 Unrecorded, 33 Bacteria.
12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by (MARSDEN, H W), ?, ? ex Herb. W.G. Farlow 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
10 workings within 5 miles of St. Mark's Methodist Church: 8 plants, 2 past producers.
8 still produce. What was taken out: Iron, Lead, Tantalum, Niobium (Columbium). 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
Brookline, the town this property stands in, in 19 storm reports between 1995 and 2022: 13 thunderstorm wind, 3 flash flood, 2 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.
Several trees and wires on Cottage Street and Dean Road were downed by thunderstorm winds. In addition, an amateur radio operator reported a 58 mph wind gust.
In Brookline, at 1259 PM EST (159 PM EDT), a tree was down onto a building on Perry Street. At 101 PM EST (201 PM EDT), a tree was down on the 200 block of Walnut Street.
Portions of Route 9 (Boylston Street) were flooded with up to three feet of water. Newton and South Streets and Clark Road were impassable due to flooding.
United States Geological Survey topographic
sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the coordinate the National Park Service records for this property, then
testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.
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
St. Mark's Methodist Church is located at the corner of Park and Vernon Streets in Brookline. The late 19th century church and the small park adjacent to it form an oasis in an otherwise highly developed neighborhood with its apartment and condominium buildings. St. Mark's Church was designed by architect George A. Clough in 1891. Its cornerstone was laid on April 9, 1892 and its dedication was held in October 1896. The Romanesque Revival church is constructed of Brighton (Massachusetts) ledge stone laid in coursed rubble with trim of yellow-grey Nova Scotia sandstone of both rock-faced and dressed surfaces. The roof is grey slate with copper flashings and gutters. The church is of a cruciform plan and its nave is two stories with one-story side aisles.
The nave is 150 feet long and 75 feet wide. The majority of the windows have guoined frames with arched heads. The north elevation of St. Mark's is dominated by a large rose window set in the gable and flanked by a truncated tower on the east and a circular bay with turret and entry porch on the west. The tower is square and has a circular side tower at its northwest corner. Original plans to construct a carillon tower above the existing corner tower had to be abandoned when it was discovered that the filled land beneath the church would not support such an addition. There are entrances on the north and east sides of the tower's ground floor. The circular bay on the west side is topped by a conical roof of sandstone tiles with a decorated sandstone finial.
West of this bay is a two- story wall with an arched entry containing double doors.
/ARCHITECT George A. Clough STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE St. Mark's Methodist Church is significant as an important architectural highlight in the northern part of Brookline and as the only 19th century reminder in a densely popu- lated area which has been completely changed by 20th century development. In 1891, having outgrown its existing chapel, the Methodist Society in Brookline estab- lished a building committee which, by the end of the year, had purchased 25,000 square feet of land at the corner of Park and Vernon Streets and had received a proposal for a church building from George Clough, The committee, headed by James Rothwell, a major contributor to the church, accepted the proposal and construction began in 1892.
- The March 13, 1897 issue of American Architect and Building News published a rendering of Clough's original design which included the additional carillon tower and a cren- ellated entry porch in front of the west entrance of the north elevation. Neither of these was built. After several delays, the church was completed at a cost of $160,000 and dedicated in 1896. St. Mark's architect, George A. Clough, was born in Bluehill, Maine in 1843 and came to Boston in the 1860's to study architecture in the office of Snell and Gregerson.
By 1869 Clough had established his own office and became known for his many public build- ings in Boston including the old English High School (1877, now demolished), the Latin High School on Montgomery Street (1877), and the Suffolk County Courthouse (1888-1889). In an early effort at colonial restoration, Clough was hired to restore the old State House in Boston. This project was carried out between 1881 and 1882 and resulted in a curious combination of Federal and Georgian details which were then thought to be his- torically appropriate.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 76000268, 104 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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