Our Building

Noted educator Horace Mann, abolitionist Nathaniel Allen, and William P. Parker, the superintendent of the Boston and Worcester Railroad, were Unitarians living in West Newton, Massachusetts in the middle of the 19th century. In the summer of 1844, Parker invited them and others to meet in the red brick Davis Tavern at the foot of Chestnut St, the center of activity in the West Newton village. After a few poorly attended meetings that summer the group disbanded but Parker called them together again in 1847 to meet in the village hall.

In November 1848, they organized the First Unitarian Society in Newton (FUSN). In 1860, a small house of worship was erected on Washington Street on the site now occupied by the West Newton Cinema. Historian Lawrence Shaw Mayo described this structure as "an unpretentious affair without spire or tower—a small, severe-looking chapel, with the light from the yellow glass windows casting a distinctly odd hue on the congregation." In 1868, the building was enlarged to hold more pews and in 1879, a church parlor and a modest tower were added. In 1895, the young Rev. Julian Jaynes, who was to spend his entire career at the FUSN, was called. His preaching style and dynamic leadership stimulated phenomenal growth and the Society, after having enlarged its present site as much as was practical, needed a new building.

The Building Begins
The present site of FUSN, at the corner of Washington and Highland Streets was once occupied by the Fuller Academy, a wooden building resembling a Greek temple. In 1844 Horace Mann acquired the building and moved the Lexington Normal School into it. In 1845, Mann named the school the West Newton Normal School for Girls, the first teacher training college in the state. Later, Nathanial Allen and the Misses Allen ran it as the Allen School. After the turn of the century, the property, as well as an additional site next door, was acquired by the Society, the buildings were removed, and on September 17, 1905, the cornerstone of the present building was laid.

Julian Jaynes’ influence is still felt in the building that houses our congregation. Very much taken with the ecclesiastical architecture he saw in England, Reverend Jaynes asserted, " I regard flat walls, white glass, and starved simplicity as the last resort for a house of religion. On the contrary, I want to preserve the best features of Gothic art—to keep all traditions and symbols that do not positively outrage our fundamental beliefs… I want the poetic, the imaginative, the beautiful, the devotional elements of religion expressed unmistakably in form and composition… which one finds so painfully lacking in the village churches of New England."

The firm of Messrs. Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson was retained to design the new building and a plan for the grounds was commissioned from the landscape design firm of Frederick Law Olmstead—designer of Boston’s Emerald Necklace of parks and New York’s Central Park. Of Ralph Adams Cram, the building’s chief designer, New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote: "Cram was a leader of that small, erudite group of medievalists who built in the Gothic and Romanesque styles from 1900 to 1930, all of whom were summarily assigned to oblivion by the modernists in their period of ascendancy. But it is hard to bury over 70 cathedrals and churches in 35 states, and collegiate buildings that set the character of more than a dozen universities."

The building designed by Cram took only 13 months to complete and was dedicated in 1906. Its English Perpendicular Gothic features are a classic example of Cram’s work. The church structure is composed of seam-faced granite and the parish buildings of brick, timber, and plaster and, originally the church and buildings were grouped around an open courtyard.

The Interior
The nave is separated from the side-aisles by a series of square piers bearing stone corbels that support the main timbers of the roof. Each corbel, ornamented with the figure of an angel, represents a memorial gift. The present arrangement of the chancel dates from about 1925 when it was dedicated, and knowledgeable people consider it to be unusually beautiful. It is enclosed by an open communion rail and is dominated by a communion table of heavy oak with carved, paneled front and sides. There is a very impressive pulpit, also of carved oak, divided into a series of upper and lower panels with pierced gothic tracery and carved figures in bas relief. The upper panels, designed by famed Italian sculptor, Signor Angelo Lualdi, have characters from history indicating the development of human thought: Paul, Augustine, Wycliffe, Martin Luther, Biddle, and Channing.

The reading pulpit, on the opposite side of the chancel, has carved figures of the four evangelists with their names and symbols. Behind and slightly to the side of each pulpit is a Clergy Chair of solid oak with high-paneled backs carved with a linen-fold design; the uprights on each chair have poppyhead finials. To the left of the pulpit stands an English perpendicular gothic Baptismal font that is 14 feet tall. The font is octagonal and the removable canopy is arranged like a spire embellished with particularly lovely pierced gothic tracery forms and carvings.

The organ is a very fine Hook & Hastings built in 1911 with 50 stops. A new console was installed and the organ was electrified in 1969. In the late 80’s and 90’s, a dedicated group of congregants, realizing that the organ needed costly repair, undertook to research the instrument and teach themselves the craft of organ rebuilding and refurbishing. By dint of creative fundraising, painstaking scholarship, and plain hard labor, they have saved and restored the organ to enviable working order.

The sanctuary is made doubly beautiful by the stained glass windows, many of which were produced by the Connick Studios of Boston. The windows were installed one at a time over the years (the most recent, the Bachrach Window, was installed in the late 50's), but several were also actually made in England and shipped here. Each window was dedicated to a former member(s) of the Society and often the content of the window is relevant to their lives, e.g., Mrs. Bachrach's love and support of music in the Society is reflected in the subject of her window; the window left by a former teacher is dedicated to education and depicts Horace Mann and the Massachusetts State House.

The church building is crowned by a graceful, square bell tower with delicate pinnacles once fashioned of concrete tracery that have since been carefully recast in a weather-resistant polymer. The tower houses a clock, once called "the town clock," and a full Westminster peal—11 bells. The smallest of the 11, the "E" bell weighs just 575 pounds, while the largest, the "D" first tenor bell weighs 3,050 pounds. Each bell carries an inscription of hope and blessing: "I sound abroad the joy at the heart of the world," "I cry the eternal progress of mankind," "I proclaim the freedom of the mind to think and of the soul to worship," for example.

Change Is Necessary
It was under the ministry of John Ogden Fisher (1950-1961) that FUSN experienced a fresh wave of growth during the postwar baby boom era. In fact, the pressing need for Sunday School space in 1952 precipitated the filling in of the courtyard space between the sanctuary and the parish hall. This addition was highly controversial and Cram scholars still bemoan the loss of the courtyard once entered beneath the gothic arch that joins the Tudor-style parish building to the sanctuary. In 1954, the Society dedicated the addition to the building, designed by architect Bela Szicklas, which housed the Cora E. Richards (children’s) chapel, a new parish kitchen, and a number of classrooms. It was a year after Fisher’s ministry, 1962, that the Massachusetts Turnpike bisected Newton, irreparably dividing many neighborhoods and wreaking havoc with the church’s beautiful grounds. It is the goal of many among the congregation to attend to the grounds and restore some of their original design.

To this day, our gothic building with its attached Tudor parish hall, though the loveliest in West Newton Square, engenders ambivalent feelings in our members. Seen both as a classic archetype of sacred space as well as an architectural albatross with heavily Christian iconography, it is certainly not the simple edifice considered more typical of a UU church. In an effort to render some of the religious elements more accessible, an Architectural Symbols committee was formed several years ago. Plans are underway for the addition of a bronze flaming chalice symbol to be mounted on the wood panels over the communion table. Labels are already being prepared to explicate the stained glass windows whose images were designed to honor education, music, public service, and other worthy pursuits.

On a number of occasions during the years since our current structure was built and dedicated, the congregation has been faced with the need to raise funds for major repairs. Water damage from the roof and porous concrete, peeling paint, an aged heating system, loosened windows, and a crumbling tower have all required costly repair, overhauling or even reconstruction. Each time, though public discussions always caused us to reexamine our values and goals, the congregation renewed its commitment to remain in the building and to make the sacrifices necessary to restore it. Each time, gifted and dedicated people came forward to research the work necessary to maintain its historical integrity, and the building is now listed in the National Historic Register. In the mid-50’s, in the early 80’s, and again in the early 90’s, there were major capital campaigns (and there probably will be another in five or six years) that called for generosity, sacrifice, and gifted leadership from the congregation. These have always been forthcoming.

There is talk these days about beginning a permanent fund—and a steady, annual way to increase it—that will finally support the building into the future. Though there are times we may complain and grumble about it, the reality so far has been, love us, love our building.