286 High Street

History

A clapboard temple front with two fluted columns set between pilastered corner antae, beneath a full pediment. An oval oculus framed by carved swags fills the tympanum; the recessed entrance carries a pedimented surround with an urn finial.

MACRIS classifies the building as Colonial Revival, though the Daily News, reporting its opening, called it a modernized Greek Revival. A reading room and lending library occupied the ell at the easterly end, open to the public two afternoons a week; the Sunday school met in the basement. The auditorium had shell-pink walls, a broad red carpet down the center aisle, and a gold panel behind the readers’ desk.

The society bought this lot, then vacant and measuring 94 by 160 feet, on May 18, 1940, from Eudora C. Hamilton and the heirs of Annie P. Brown. Ten months later, on the evening of Wednesday, March 19, 1941, the doors opened for the first time for the midweek meeting, with the building still unfinished. The first Sunday service followed on the 23rd, Sarah Randall serving as first reader and Florence M. Corporon as second, Marguerite Norton at the organ, and Raymond F. Blake, president of the society, among the ushers.

The congregation came here from State Street, where it had met in the former Whitefield Congregational meetinghouse at the Prospect Street corner, razed that same year for the city’s first self-service supermarket. The church added abutting land in 1948 and 1974, and sold the property in December 2009. MACRIS records 1943 for this building. Christian Science churches are not dedicated until they are free of debt, so that date most likely marks the dedication.