First Church of Christ, Congregational (Springfield, Massachusetts)

First Church of Christ, Congregational is an historic church at 50 Elm Street in Springfield, Massachusetts. Often called the "heart" of the City of Springfield, four incarnations of the Old First Church have stood at Springfield's Court Square since 1637, the year following Springfield's founding by Puritan iconoclast and businessman, William Pynchon. This particular church was built in 1819 and added to the National Historic Register in 1972 - the second building in Springfield added to the Register, (the first was the Federal Springfield Armory.) ^[2]

From 1908 until 1970, the height of the steeple on the Old First Church (125 feet) was used as a legal limit for heights of buildings in Springfield, as per the order of the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1908, (the one exception being the Springfield Municipal Group, dedicated in 1913 by President William Howard Taft.) Thus, in Springfield, one finds fewer skyscrapers than one does in most comparable United States cities, (e.g. Hartford, Connecticut and Providence, Rhode Island.) ^[3]

The following paragraph, written by Springfield architect Eugene C. Gardner, illustrates the importance of the Old First Church to Springfield:

• "As in the old New England towns, almost without exception, the first church erected was the point from which all things emanated, toward which all things tended, and around which everything revolved. It not only dominated the green turf in front, and the sometimes dreary burial ground behind, or at one side, but it set the pace for all other local affairs, social, political and educational as well as religious. It has not always happened, however, as here, that this ethical and business center has remained the visible aesthetic center. And although but a comparatively small part of our best architectural growth has been adjacent to Court square, and other churches have shared the burdens and responsibilities of directing our temporal as well as spiritual concerns, the characteristic, though by no means ornate, or altogether graceful, spire of the First church remains, as regards locality, the civic center of gravity." ^[4]

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