Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1984. 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
“The Church of Christ, later the Revere Masonic Temple, is a historic church building at 265 Beach Street in Revere, Massachusetts, United States. Now a three-story Shingle style structure, it encapsulates elements of a 1710 colonial meeting house, one of the oldest such structures to survive.”
Wikipedia article Church of Christ (Revere, Massachusetts), CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 206 National Register listings in Suffolk County · listed in 1984 · category: Building · one of 5 National Historic Landmarks in Suffolk County.
National Register reference number.84000430- 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.
The Post-Oflfice of Revere (North Chelsea) was established July 'I'i, 184(i, the first Postmaster being; Joseph H. Fenno, who served a community of about 750 persons. He was succeeded l:)y William Fenno, Hatch Crocker, George Newcomb, and James L. Wiggin, the latter being the last of the independent Postmasters at Revere. June 1, 1875, Revere became a Boston vStation, and free delivery was introduced in a Town that covered (August 1, 1892) about 3,540 acres, with a population of about 1,750 on July 1, 1875, and U,000 in 1892.
Winthrop, set off from North Chelsea (Revere) in 1853, was named after Deane Winthrop. The Post-Office was established February 2, 1853, and has had but one chief, Warren Belcher having been Postmaster up to May :]1, 1875, and head of the Station since. His allowance in 1855 was $17.17; the surplus, $5.84; the community served, less than 500. The Census of 1870 reports the population of Winthrop at 532. It is now about 3,500 (August 1, 18'.t2), and the area, 980 acres. Winthrop has had free delivery since June 1, 1875, when it became a jjart of postal Boston. It had been a part of municipal Boston up to 173!).
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 38 fires within 5 miles of Church of Christ between
2003 and 2020, burning about 19 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
16
Debris and open burning
11
Smoking
5
Recreation and ceremony
4
Arson/incendiarism
2
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 15,087 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Church of Christ between 1810 and
1975: 6,873 Plantae, 3,785 Fungi, 2,652 Animalia, 1,281 Chromista, 227 Bacteria, 150 Protozoa, 119 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A B Seymour, A C Gibson 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
11 workings within 5 miles of Church of Christ: 7 plants, 2 producers, 1 past producer, 1 unknown.
9 still produce. What was taken out: Stone, Crushed/Broken, Lead, Gypsum-Anhydrite, Iron. 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
Revere, the town this property stands in, in 26 storm reports between 1998 and 2023: 9 flood, 8 thunderstorm wind, 3 hail, 3 flash flood.
The reports record 1 death. 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.
A roof was blown off a house on Winthrop Parkway in Revere. In addition, a tree, large limbs, and wires were downed by thunderstorm winds in Winthrop. The tree and branches were downed onto cars.
At 720 AM EST in Revere, a car was trapped in one foot of flooding on State Route 1A near the East Boston line. At 742 AM EST, amateur radio reported a flooded basement on Curtis Road. At 747 AM EST, three cars were reported trapped in flood waters on the Revere Beach Parkway.
In Revere, eighteen inches of water flooded Bell Circle. In Boston, the intersection of Columbia Road and Quincy Street flooded with one car stuck in the flood waters. Brookline Avenue was flooding near the Riverway. In West Roxbury, the VFW Parkway flooded near the high school.
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
4,230 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
In its present appearance, the Church of Christ in Revere is a three-story Shingle Style of plan with an irregular roofline. The exterior walls are clad with wood shingles while asphalt shingles cover the roof. The building consists of a two-story gable-roofed main block on a one- story raised brick basement. The main body of the building contains the intact two-story, 43' frame of Revere's 1710 meetinghouse. To the west is a two-and-a-half story gable-roofed addition (1888) extending slightly beyond the width of the main block. Projecting off the east end of main block is a narrower two-story shed-roofed addition (1888) with a one-story hipped-roof addition (1888) at the northeast corner.
The Church of Christ stands on an asphalt-paved triangular lot in a neighbor- hood of late 19th and early 20th century one to three-story houses. It is located approximately 4 mile northeast of Revere's municipal center. Exterior Features: The roof of the original meetinghouse is a gable of shallow pitch, its profile distinct from those of the later additions. The roof of the main block features open eaves supported on curved shingled brackets. The additions are marked by lower rooflines: the west addition is enclosed by a gable roof with a steep slope springing from a ridge parallel to but slightly below that of the meetinghouse. Its gable forms a shallow over- hang supported on curved shingled brackets on the second story level.
The shed-roofed east addition rises just to the gable of the meetinghouse and contains a narrow chimney in one corner. Both east and west additions display plain boxed cornices. The walls of the building contain a variety of windows in paired and single combinations.
/Architect 1856 - Thomas Silloway Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) The Church of Christ is architecturally significant for its intact 1710 meetinghouse frame, which is one of the earliest meetinghouses structures surviving in New England; and as an illustration of the manner in which early buildings were updated to reflect current architectural modes. Historically, the building is important as the focus of political and religious life in 18th century Rumney Marsh (now Revere) and Chelsea (established as a town in 1738 with Rumney Marsh as its center). The building also evidences the perceived need of its 19th century congregation to be housed in a stylish structure. The Church of Christ possesses integrity of location, materials, c workmanship and association.
As a rare surviving early 18th century of Christ meets Criteria A and C of the National Register of Historic Places on the local level. Architectural Significance: The Church of Christ building contains the earliest meetinghouse structure (1710) in Suffolk County and is among the halt dozen oldest meetinghouses in New England. It predates any other existing building in Revere by a quarter of a century. The original building was a simple structure reflecting the modest life-style of its parishoners. Its simplicity was characteristic of 18th century meetinghouses in outlying suburbs and rural areas with limited economic base, such as Rumney Marsh was in 1710 when the meetinghouse was constructed.
Architecturally, it is an earlj example of the rectangular plan, gable-roofed meetinghouse form, entered on the long wall, which was typical of New England meetinghouses from ca.1700 to ca. 1730. In addition to its age, the Church of Christ is significant for its intact 1710 timber frame, all the elements of which survive, enclosed within the present Shingle Style structure.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 84000430, 22 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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