In 1980 the Meeting House was purchased by the Charles Street Meeting House Associates. This group intended to restore the exterior and find viable, compatible uses for the interior spaces. Exterior restoration and interior renovation for office (4 floors), retail (ground floor), and residential uses commenced in the fall of 1981. The exterior was completely preserved.

The Charles Street Meetinghouse, built in 1807 in Boston, has hosted various communities, evolving from a segregated Baptist church to a safe haven for radical thinkers. It was a hub for abolitionists like Timothy Gilbert, who challenged segregation, and later became home to the First African Methodist Episcopal Church. By the 1970s, it served Boston’s LGBTQIA community, hosting the first gay dances and youth advocacy programs. The Meetinghouse remains a symbol of progressive change.

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS There were no nagging preservationists when, in 1920, city officials decided to widen Charles Street on Beacon Hill. Wreckers simply lopped off the front 10 feet of the houses on the river side of the street. The old photo shows the facades of many of the houses being rebuilt after the massacre. The new photo reveals that a great deal of further rebuilding has occurred since then. Like so much of what we think of as historic Boston, this side of Charles Street is almost entirely a 20th-century invention. The exception is the Charles Street Meeting House, the cupola of which can be seen above the housetops at the right of both photos. Designed in the Federal style by a noted architect, Asher Benjamin, it was bl:lilt in 1807 for a Baptist congregation. The site it stood on had just been carved out by developers, who had cut off the top of nearby M t. Vernon Street to fill the riverbank. In the early years, the Baptists could and did immerse their devotees directly in the Charles, which flowed past the back door. In 1920 the church, then housing a black congregation, was scheduled to be demolished for the street widening, but members and neighbors raised funds to move it the necessary 10 feet. It became Albanian Orthodox, then Unitarian Universalist, and most recently, in 1982, was renovated for shops and offices by an architect who lives in the tower. -Robert Campbell and Peter Vanderwarker, "CITYSCAPES - Charles Street", Boston Globe, 21 March 1993

volume 1, number 1_northeastern univ

Charles Street Meeting House

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