David Bains, Samford University
Jonathon Eder, Mary Baker Eddy Library
Barry Huff, Principia College
Daniel Sack, Washington, D.C.

Tentative schedule

12:35           Leave Hynes Convention Center
12:50           Arrive First Church of Christ, Scientist
1:45             Arrive St. Cecila Catholic Church
2:15             Depart for Church of the Covenant
2:45             Arrive Church of the Covenant (corner of Berkley and Newbury)
3:15             Depart for Church of the Covenant
3:30             Arrive Old South Church
4:00             Depart for Convention Center

Note related session this afternoon: BIble and Visual Art (S25-305) 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., 305 Hynes Convention Center includes paper by Barry Huff “Gospels in Glass: Stained Glass Windows in Boston’s Back Bay” and David Shepherd, “The Power of Design: Edward Burne-Jones’s ‘David Instructing Solomon’ (1883) for Trinity Church, Boston.”

Tour notes by David Bains.

This afternoon’s walking tour will visit the interior of four historic churches in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. Each was built in the revival of a historic revival style, as were most U.S. churches before World War II. The buildings represent three Christian traditions closely associated with the history of New England: Christian Science, Roman Catholicism, and Congregationalism. Other churches will be visible along the tour route, most notably Trinity Church (Episcopal).

The first stop is the mother church of a New-England-born variety of Christianity: The First Church of Christ, Scientist. From there we will go to a site established by Massachusetts largest religious group, St. Cecilia Catholic Church. These locations date from the 1890s and are outside the of Back Bay’s historic section. From here we will walk to the heart of Back Bay to visit two churches that were among the first to move to Back Bay: The Church of the Covenant and Old South Church.

The original city of Boston was located on the Shawmut Peninsula which was connected to the mainland by a narrow strip of roughly paralleling today’s Washington Street. Until the 1850s, Back Bay was part of the Charles River estuary. It was tidal and shallow. Much of it was exposed as marsh at low tide. Beginning in 1815, a milldam was built along today’s Beacon Street separating the bay from the river.

In 1857, the bay began to be filled, the ground we are touring was completed by 1882, the entire bay to near Kenmore Square by 1890. The filling eliminated ecologically valuable wetlands but created Boston’s premier Victorian neighborhood. Elegant townhouses, museums, and libraries soon lined its broad, straight streets. Joining them were Protestant churches, for old congregations (Old South and Covenant), new congregations (Emmanuel), and even new denominations (Christian Science). Catholics were present only on the fringes (St. Ceclia), and Jews would not hold services here until the twenty-first century.

The First Church of Christ, Scientist
Mother Church and Extension
210 Massachusetts Avenue, Boston, MA  02115
(617) 450-2000

Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) published Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures in 1875 and founded the Christian Science Association in 1879. The First Church of Christ, Scientist became the center of the denomination and is often referred to as the Mother Church. The church’s building consists of units in contrasting architectural styles. The original Romanesque Revival auditorium church was designed by Franklin I. Welch of Malden, MA, and completed in 1895. The much larger neo-classical Extension was begun by Charles Brigham and completed by Solon S. Beman. The extension opened in 1906. For much more information on this site see the discussion by Jeanne Halgren Kilde prepared for a 2017 AAR tour here in this PDF linked here.

St. Ceclia Roman Catholic Church
18 Belvidere Street, Boston, MA 02115
(617) 536-4548

Saint Cecilia Parish was established in 1888 to serve the Irish who worked in the homes of the members well-to-do Yankees who lived in Back Bay. Unlike the other churches in this tour, it does not occupy a prominent site on one of the neighborhood’s major streets but is on the corner of narrow streets. The site is made even less conspicuous by the tall buildings that surround it. St. Cecilia is a Roman virgin martyr of the early third century who is mentioned in the canon of the mass. She is the patron saint of musicians.

The present church was dedicated on April 22, 1894. The parish history describes its building as described as twelfth-century Norman revival. This can be seen in the simplicity of the arches in its tower and in the arches that define its windows on the exterior. The church has seen several renovations over the years and the interior with its Corinthian columns is more neo-classical. One in 1954 saw the addition of the stained glass windows depicting the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into heaven that are over the main door and the statues of St. Patrick and St. Pope Pius X at the front of the church. Another, completed in 2011 added the entry pavilion on the east side of the church (replacing and earlier classroom structure) and the current glass enclosed narthex at the entrance to the church. This 2011 renovation was designed by Context Architecture of Boston, Canning Liturgical Arts served as the conservator and the trade contractor for the worship space. It received an award from the Boston Preservation Alliance in 2012.

In its present form, worshipers entering the church directly from the street are directed to a single front door and are immediately presented with a full view of the church through the glass walls, but then turn to the left or the right to enter the church itself. The curved glass wall provides a slightly more enclosed space for the baptismal font which is in a now customary location at the entrance to the center aisle. Because the entrances from the narthex are to the right or left, the font is not directly in the middle of worshipers’ path as in some churches.

The nave is in the traditional basilican form: arched colonnades separate the architectural aisles on each side from the central section. The central processional aisle directs worshipers directly to the square free-standing altar and the tabernacle on the high altar behind this. When a choir is present, chairs in the area between the free standing altar and the original high altar are arranged to face the congregation. At other times, they arranged facing inward to keep the focus on liturgical centers and to provide seating for smaller services.

Above tabernacle on the high altar is a copy of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. Further above this is a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and then a painting of Christ the King. The statue of Mary is flanked by depictions of St. Cecilia, the patron of the church and St. Patrick, the patron of the archdiocese of Boston. At the end of the side aisles, over the side altars are statues of St. Pius X (1853-1914) and St. Patrick accompanied by paintings of scenes from their lives. These were installed as part of the 1954 renovation. This was also the year that Pius X was canonized.

There are four major iconographic cycles in the nave. The stained glass windows date to the near the time of the church’s construction and depict a variety of saints including Aloysius, John the Evangelist, Cecilia, Augustine of Hippo, Bernard of Clairvaux, Helena, Clement, Agnes, Brigid. The sixteen diamond panels in the ceiling toward the bottom of the barrel vault our symbols of the Blessed Virgin Mary taken from the Litany of Loreto. Above the church’s columns are circular panels depicting with the names and symbols of the twelve apostles. This linking of church columns with the apostles is common and associated with Paul’s statement that the apostles Peter, James, and John were pillars of the church (Galatians 2:9). The newest and perhaps most engaging of iconographic cycles are the painting of saints by Nancy Marek Cote of Somerset, Massachusetts. These are a portion of 54 paintings of ancient and modern saints that she has created which are viewable on her website. The paintings on display here include biblical saints, such as Peter, historic saints such as Isidore the Farmer, and many more modern ones such as Oscar Romero (1917-1980) and Carlo Acutis (1991-2006). Included also are figures who are not yet fully canonized as saints. Thus the image of Acutis was painted before his 2025 canonization and the painting states his previous (lower) title of “Blessed.” Other persons depicted here who are recognized by the church but not yet canonized include Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897-1980), Venerable Satoko Kitahara (1929-1958), and Venerable Augustus Tolton (1854-1897).

St. Cecilia’s current organ is by Smith & Gilbert and was completed in 1999. It has 4 manuals, 54 ranks, and 3,084 pipes. https://www.bostonorganstudio.com/st-cecilia-parish

The Church of the Covenant
67 Newbury Street, Boston MA 02116
(617) 266-7480
https://www.cotcbos.org/

This building now known as Church of the Covenant was erected for Central Congregational Church (organized in 1835) and opened in 1867. Central Congregational Church was the first Congregational Church to relocate to Back Bay. Its commanding spire defines the street. The architect was Richard M. Upjohn, the son of Richard Upjohn, the pioneering Gothic revival architect who designed Trinity Church in New York City. The interior was redecorated in the 1890s by the firm of Louis Comfort Tiffany. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2012.

In 1932 Central Congregational merged with First Presbyterian Church (organized in 1853) and the merged congregation took the name the Church of the Covenant. It is affiliated with both the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Additional information on the building’s art, architecture, and preservation is available on the church’s preservation project website: https://covbospresproj.org/

Our guide at Church of the Covenant will be Simone DeVito.

Old South Church
645 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
(617) 536-1970

Old South Church was organized in 1669 as Third Congregational Church and located at Washington and Milk Streets. It became known as Old South when located in its 1717 when another church was organized further to the South. Its 1730 brick Georgian meetinghouse stands at Washington and Milk streets in Downtown Boston. The present church was designed in the Venetian Gothic style advocated by John Ruskin by the firm of Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears. It was completed in 1873. The congregation is part of the United Church of Christ. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

A PDF of a detailed guide to the history of the congregation and the building composed by the church in 2022 is available here.

The church interior has been redecorated several times, but was restored to close to its original appearance in 1985. This interior is in harmony with the Ruskinian Gothic exterior, and expressed Ruskin’s ideal that it is “in art that the heart, the head, and the hand of a man come together.” Previously the interior was redecorated by Louis Comfort Tiffany in 1905 reflecting the styles of what came to be known as the Aesthetic Movement. It was again redecorated in the early 1950s in a more minimalist fashion.

Other religious sites on our near the tour route include:

The former First Spiritualist Temple at 26 Exeter Street on the corner of Newbury Street. This is a majestic 1885 Richardsonian Romanesque building that formerly featured a large auditorium. It was funded by Marcellus Seth Ayer. One of the carvings above the door features a descending dove and a triangle emblazoned with the words “Liberty, Justice, Fraternity.” Photos of the interior are available here. The temple congregation still exists and meets virtually. Its headquarters are in Kingston, New York.

Trinity Church in the City of Boston, is located on Copley Square. Designed by H.H. Richardson (1838–86), Trinity Church is routinely listed as one of the dozen most important buildings in the history of American architecture. It is also the third oldest Episcopal congregation in Boston, founded in 1733. The congregation’s first two buildings were located near what is now Downtown Crossing. When the Great Fire of 1872 destroyed the second of these, the church resolved to relocate to the newly filled Back Bay. Phillips Brooks (1835–93) had become rector just three years earlier. He was regarded as one of the greatest preachers of his day, and the congregation was determined to build a large, new landmark building. The church was consecrated in 1877 and the porch added in 1897. Together with the Boston Public Library, the (New) Old South Church, and Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel (on the former site of Brigham’s Museum of Fine Arts), the church has defined Copley Square, one of Boston’s most important civic spaces. For more information on Trinity Church see my notes for the 2017 AAR tour of Back Bay churches.

The Community Church of Boston also faces Copley Square. It is located at 565 Boylston Street. The congregation was founded in the 1920s by Clarence Skinner, dean of the Tufts School of Religion, a Universalist school. It began holding its Sunday assemblies in Symphony Hall in 1927 and purchased its present site in 1946. It affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1968. Worship services are now held at its Copley Square site.