[MassHistPres] Churches by an as yet unID Boston architect, likely Bond, Melvin, or Towle - all actively designing outstanding New England churches in the 1840s!

[Stephen Jerome]

Ellsworth Congregational Church, built in 1846 and long a landmark in
Ellsworth, Maine (photo below) still stands, but Harvard church (cut
attached), built two years earlier - in Brookline, Massachusetts, is long
gone. Their clear design relationship raises the all too common pattern of
how we tend to overlook lost or unpublished buildings, limiting scholarship
to sources still standing or already documented in print when we study
buildings.

Glenn Andres and Curtis Johnson, in their excellent Buildings of the United
States book on Vermont, published by the Society of Architectural
Historians, traced the striking relationship of three extant Vermont and
New Hampshire examples to Ellsworth Congregational Church, raising
questions of architectural authorship, etc.

Harvard Church, Brookline, based on published London church models, is the
likely source. Curiously, contemporary Boston newspaper accounts of Harvard
Church omit mention of its architect and other construction details, but in
the same year, Bond designed the Brookline Town House (no longer standing)
and Towle was building houses nearby.

In Maine last month, we revisited the Ellsworth church. Its interior is
largely unaltered and intact to its 1846 construction by builder Thomas
Lord -  not, in my considered opinion, its designer, (despite
church records that document he was paid for making drawings).

Thoughts on connecting the dots and reattributing the Ellsworth
Congregational Church to another architect are greatly welcomed.

Sincerely,

Steve Jerome
architectural historian
Cambridge
617-388-2359

[image: b367bb27-d2e0-4a55-a6a5-854c3b96b9bb.png]
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