Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1976. 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
“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 249 National Register listings in Norfolk County · listed in 1976 · category: Building · one of 2 National Historic Landmarks in Norfolk County.
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.
THERE are only six cities and no individual towns in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with a larger tax list than the town of Brookline. The town of Milton is the only one approaching it in the value of its taxable property, ami the relative value on the tax lists of the two towns is as $65,- 000,000 is to $20,000,000. Watertown, Westll(.l,l Detlham, Manchester, Framingham, Plymouth, Falmouth, Weymouth, N'atick, Attleboro, Marblehead and Amesbury, all delightful colonial towns, each brin- to the Commonwealth a tax income of less than one tenth the amounl contributed by Brookline.
When the town of Brookline was bom mi November 13, 1705, Massachusetts bad over sixty towns in her family ranging in age from one to eighty-five years. The same form of town government inaugurated at the birth of each has been preserved by Brookline and carried nut in the town meetings of cad, year. The officers taking part in the celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of Brookline's birth, November 13, [005, were elected to office and performed the same functions as did i1m.sc chosen in 1705 to stand sponsors t<> the infant town. The voting list df the town lias increased to 1,300 and the limits of the town include the villages of Cottage population at the time of the celebration of its -w,, hundredth birthday numbered over 23,000. Brookline is unique, as a Massachusetts town, its limits, the only exception being electric motors and philosophical instruments. Its wealth and importance is due mainly to its natural and acquired beauty, and its healthfulness a- a residential town. The private fortunes of its inhabitants furnish the means for its multiplying wealth of attractions as a place of suburban residence, and unlike most Massachusetts towns, no rich corporations are sheltered within its borders.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 24 fires within 5 miles of St. Mark's Methodist Church between
2003 and 2020, burning about 327 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
11
Recreation and ceremony
7
Smoking
3
Arson/incendiarism
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 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
8 workings within 5 miles of St. Mark's Methodist Church: 7 plants, 1 past producer.
7 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.
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
30,285 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
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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