Old South Church, Boston, Massachusetts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the church on Boylston Street. For the Puritan meeting house in Downtown Crossing, see Old South Meeting House.
Old South Church in Boston, also called the New Old South Church was built between 1872-1875, on newly filled land in the Back Bay of Boston in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It is located at 645 Boylston Street on Copley Square.
Contents |
[edit] History of the congregation
This United Church of Christ (historically related to the Congregationalists) meeting house is home to one of the older religious communities in the United States, organized by dissenters from Boston's First Church in 1669, and from that time known as the Third Church in Boston. The Third Church's congregation met first in their Cedar Meeting House (1670), then at the Old South Meeting House at the corner of Washington and Milk Streets in Boston. Members of the congregation have included Samuel Adams, William Dawes, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Sewall, and Phillis Wheatley. In 1773, Samuel Adams gave the signals from the Old South Meeting House for the "war whoops" that started the Boston Tea Party. During the Unitarian Movement of the early nineteenth century, Old South was the sole Congregational Church in Boston to adhere to the doctrine of Trinitarianism. In the mid-nineteenth century Old South Church with Park Street Church to form the City Mission Society, a social service society to serve the urban poor. During the American Civil War, Old South became a recruiting center for the Union Army under minister Jacob Manning. Though the congregation was not entirely abolitionist, it strongly supported the Union cause. The conclusion of the Civil War was followed by an expansive time of increased inclusion for the congregation. Under minister George Angier Gordon the congregation moved from its meeting house at Washington Street to its present Back Bay location in 1875. Old South's commitment to urban ministry and care continued on into the twentieth century becoming a segue for the inclusion of new members increasingly diverse by race, class, and sexual orientation. The congregation has formally adopted a platform of equality, social justice, and peace.
[edit] Architecture
The church building was designed by the Boston architectural firm of Cummings and Sears in the Venetian Gothic style. The style follows the precepts of the British cultural theorist and architectural critic John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) as outlined in his treatise The Stones of Venice. Old South Church in Boston remains one of the most significant examples of Ruskin's influence on American architecture. Construction of the "New" Old South Church began in 1872 under Boston architect Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears, who also designed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The exterior is primarily built of Roxbury puddingstone. Many arches, and several walls of stone are striped with alternating courses of Roxbury pudding stone and a deep rose sandstone. Delicate stone tracery decorates the porticos and large open arches in the campanile. Screens of ornate ironwork fill the upper arches of the porticos, and ornamental iron cresting caps the roofline. The roof is covered in alternating bands of red and dark gray slate.
[edit] The Campanile
A tall tower, or campanile is the trademark feature of Old South and is visible from several Boston neighborhoods. The tower, on the western end of the church, rises to a height of 246' and houses the church's 2020 pound bell. This is the second campanile built on the same site, of almost identical design. The first tower, completed in 1875 along with the rest of the church, had begun to list by the late 1920s. The cause was determined to be the faulty footings and piles anchored in the soft former swampland. They were insufficient for the load of the tower. The tower was dismantled, and early 1930s technology of steam shovel and steel pilings provided a lasting solution. Today, the pitch and height of the tower are tested annually and records attest to its enduring stability. The bell wheel, which by motion of a heavy rope swings the large bell, had deteriorated by the late twentieth century requiring that the bell be rung by an external hammer. A faithful reconstruction of the original 1931 bell wheel, installed in early fall 2006, returned Old South's bell to "full swing."
[edit] The Lantern
Centered above the Sanctuary on the east side of the church is a copper clad cupola surrounded by twelve ornate gothic arched windows. This feature is reminiscent of the cupolas of the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice. While the lantern provides a striking visual presence it was also built with function in mind. In the days before mechanical fans and air conditioning a series of mechanically operated louvers allowed for window panels to be opened to help cool the sanctuary inside.
[edit] Decorative arts
The interior of Old South is exuberant yet quietly modulates the mix of rich materials: highly carved Italian cherry woodwork, limestone, stenciled plaster, and stained glass. The Sanctuary is entered from the Narthex by passing through a screen carved of Caen limestone from France. The screen is carved in foliage and animals. Hidden among the foliage can be found a squirrel, lizard, owl, and snail. A similar theme of animals is also found in the exterior carving. The east side of the Chancel, behind the choir, is faced by a running screen of wooden arches with quatrefoil lunettes adapted from the second floor walkway of the Doge's Palace in Venice. The stained glass windows are by Clayton and Bell of London in the style of fifteenth century England.
[edit] The 1875 Cummings and Sears interior
When Old South's church opened in 1875 it looked very much as it does today, based upon the design of Cummings and Sears. The walls were decorated in polychrome stenciling in shades of complex tertiary colors: a madder rose background with overlays of ochre, bay leaf green, warm gray, and persimmon, and highlights of metallic gold. Most of the interior structure, except for the carved wood frieze along the balconies, was already in place by 1875. High above the crossing of the transepts and nave is the lantern, or cupola. The ceiling of the lantern was painted a deep Prussian blue with a pattern of gilded stars to represent the firmament of God. The limestone tracery of the west wall of the Sanctuary, with its foliage and animals, combined with the highly carved foliated woodwork and the overhead representation of the nighttime sky was intended to echo God's creation. The combined effect was extremely rich; at once a spiritual and sensuous experience, and in great contrast to the chaste interior of Old South Meeting House on Washington Street. Stylistically the 1875 interior was in harmony with the Ruskinian Gothic exterior, and expressed Ruskin's ideal that it is “in art that the heart, the head, and the hand of a man come together.”
[edit] The 1905 Tiffany interior
In 1905 the congregation hired Louis Comfort Tiffany to redecorate the Sanctuary. Tiffany headed a group of artisans called the Associated Artists who worked largely in a style now called the Aesthetic Movement. Tiffany was a part of an emerging American view of design in the United States, increasingly taking fewer cues from Europe. Tiffany had decorated Mark Twain's home in Hartford, Connecticut, the state rooms at the White House, and several Back Bay homes. In some ways Tiffany was an expected and very good choice to redecorate Old South. He followed many of the ideas of John Ruskin; he believed in the dignity and importance of the human hand and eye in the decorative arts. Yet Tiffany arrived at Old South at a time when his gilded age style was in decline. A new wave of neoclassicism called Beaux Arts, and the Colonial Revival style were wiping away Victorian decoration. In 1902 Theodore Roosevelt had all of the Tiffany influence removed from the White House. Old South's stained glass windows were covered by insets of purple glass. The original polychrome stenciled plaster walls were painted purple, then covered in a silver metallic stencil intended to appear as mother of pearl inlay. Tiffany's work at Old South was a rich and unified tour de force.
[edit] 1950s minimalism
In the early 1950s, possibly influenced by the minimalism of the International Style, an unfortunate renovation of the Sanctuary took place. Louis Comfort Tiffany's paint and stenciling was obscured by a coat of light gray paint, and the purple Tiffany glass installed over the stained glass was removed. In some ways the removal of decoration recalled the congregation's Puritan roots.
[edit] The 1984 restoration
In 1984 a research driven restoration was begun. The period of the building's construction was adopted, and using old photographs and engravings the interior spaces were returned very nearly to their 1875 appearance.
[edit] The Organ
The church's present organ, Opus 308, was built in 1921 by E. M. Skinner of Boston for the St. Paul, Minnesota Municipal Auditorium, and brought to the church in 1982 when that building was demolished. It has 183 ranks and 8,672 pipes ranging from 0.25 inches to 32 feet in length.
[edit] Ministers of Old South Church
To date twenty ministers have served Old South's congregation as Senior Minister; they are:
- Thomas Thacher 1670-1678
- Samuel Willard 1678-1707
- Ebenezer Pemberton 1700-1717
- Joseph Sewall 1713-1769
- Thomas Prince 1718-1758
- Alexander Cumming 1761-1763
- Samuel Blair 1766-1769
- John Hunt/John Bacon 1771-1775
- Joseph Eckley 1779-1811
- Joshua Huntington 1808-1819
- Benjamin B. Wisner 1821-1832
- Samuel H. Stearns 1834-1836
- George W. Blagden 1836-1872
- Jacob M. Manning 1857-1872
- George Angier Gordon 1884-1927
- Russell Henry Stafford 1927-1945
- Frederick M. Meek 1946-1973
- James W. Crawford 1974-2002
- Carl F. Schultz, Jr. 2002-2005 (Interim)
- Nancy S. Taylor 2005-
[edit] References
- Aldrich, Megan. Gothic Revival. Phaidon Press Ltd: 1994. ISBN 0-7148-2886-6.
- Bunting, Bainbridge. Houses of Boston's Back Bay: An Architectural History, 1840-1917. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 1967. ISBN 0-6744-0901-9.
- Placzek, Adolf K. Macmillan. Encyclopedia of Architects. 4 vols. Free Press: 1982. ISBN 0-0292-5000-5.
- Withey, Henry F. Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased). Hennessey & Ingalls: 1970.
[edit] External links
- Site of Old South Church in Boston
- Site of the United Church of Christ
- High Victorian Gothic architecture in America
- Boston history and architecture
Categories: 1875 architecture | Boston, Massachusetts | Buildings and structures in Massachusetts | Churches in Boston | Churches in Massachusetts | Landmarks in Massachusetts | Registered Historic Places in Massachusetts | Gothic Revival architecture | United Uniting churches | Members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches | United Church of Christ | Congregationalism | Buildings and structures in Boston
