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Clarke Street Meeting House
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| Location: | Newport, Rhode Island |
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| Built: | 1735 |
| Architect: | Palmer,Cotton |
| Architectural style: | No Style Listed |
| Governing body: | Private |
| NRHP Reference#: |
71000020 [1] |
| Added to NRHP: | January 25, 1971 |
Clarke Street Meeting House (also known as Second Congregational Church Newport County or Central Baptist Church) is an historic former meeting house and Reformed Christian church building in Newport, Rhode Island.
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The meeting house was built in 1735 and served as a worship place for the Second Congregational Church, originally a Calvinist congregation. From 1755 to 1786, Ezra Stiles, a well-known minister who later became president of Yale University, pastored the church and lived in the Ezra Stiles House across the street. During the Revolutionary War, the British occupied the meeting house and minister's house for use as a barracks and hospital from 1776 to 1779. After the War, a committee of Second Church members, including William Ellery, Henry Marchant, Robert Stevens and William Channing wrote to John Adams in the Europe requesting that he contact Reformed congregations there for assistance in repairing the church due to the British army's damage to the building.[2] Adams responded that he would be unable to help because of differences in European attitudes toward soliciting for funds.[3] Regardless of the difficulties, the building was extensively repaired in 1785. The congregation later left the building and merged with Newport's First Congregational Church to become United Congregational Church to which the building was sold in 1835. In 1847 the Central Baptist Society purchased and extensively modified the building. In 1950 St. Joseph's Church of Newport purchased the meeting house and further renovated the structure.[4] The Clarke Street Meeting House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
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