FRONTISPIECE. PULPIT OF THE CHURCH IN BRATTLE SQUARE, BOSTON, 1772-73. (SPNEA collection; photograph by J. David Bohl.) OLD-TIME NEW ENGLAND A QuarterlyMagazine DevotedIO the AncientBuildings, HouseholdFurnishings, Domestic Arts, Mannersand Customs, and Minor Antiquitiesoj ’ the New EnglandPeople BULLETIN OF THE SKIETY FORTHE PRESERVATIONOF NEW ENGLAND ANTIQUITIES Vol. LXIX, Nos. 3-4 Winter-Spring 1979 Serial Nos. 255-256 Thomas Dawes’s Church in Brattle Square FREDERIC C. DETWILLER he significance of Boston’s now- congregation destroyed church of 1772in Brattle Dr. Samuel Cooper, among the fund- T Square, at the comer of Brattle raisersfor the rebuilding of Harvard Hall in Street (now Government Center Plaza), 1764-66by Thomas Dawes, was pastor of designedby Thomas Dawes, has long been the old “Manifesto Church” when a new overlooked. The church building’s innova- building became necessary in 1772.’ The tive entrance pavilion form was widely im- congregation consisted of many of the as- itated and its interior especially made it one piring aristocrats of the provincial capital. of the crowning architectural achievements An early (ca. 1774)plan gives the pew loca- of eighteenth-century Boston. It was an tions of many of the town’s leading citizens important “missing link” which combined and reads like a veritable Who’s Who in elements of the traditional square New En- Boston at the time of the Revolution (fig. 1). gland meetinghouse with the longitudinal On the building committee were two Anglican church of the eighteenth century. governors. John Hancock, a major sub- The resulting hybrid, with Palladian ele- scriber to the building, gave the pulpit, ments added, became the basis for well- bible, and bell. James Bowdoin, who of- known later designs including that of the fered a new site which was turned down, First Baptist Meetinghouse of 1774in Prov- also offered materials; his son of the same idence, Rhode Island, and at least two name later gave the gallery clock.* other churches in Massachusettsdesigned Many other Boston notables worshipped by Charles Bulfinch about 1790. Asher at the church, including John and Samuel Benjamin’s “Design for a Church,” pub- lished in his 1797 Country Builder’sAssis- FredericC. Detwiller is an architecturalhisto- tant, evolved from the earlier examples. rian in the preservationservices department of Benjamin’s “Design” became the source the SPNEA. He attended the Restoration and Preservationof Historic Architecture program for many famous early nineteenth-century at Columbia University’s School of Architec- meetinghouse-churches built throughout ture, and is a past contributorto Old- Time New New England. England. 1 Old- Time New England FIG. 1. CHURCH 1N BRATTLE SQUARE, BOSTON. Original main floor and galley pew plans, with list of proprietors, ca 1772. From The Records offhe Church in Et-art/e Square (Boston,1902). Adams, Joseph Warren, Samuel A. and Design Harrison Gray Otis, Theodore Lyman, An informal competition apparently Samuel Dexter, and Daniel Webster.’ Dr. took place for the designof the new church, Thomas Bulfinch, whose sisterJudith mar- the participants being well-known artist ried Rev. Samuel Cooper, kept a pew here, John Singleton Copley, and bricklayer- and was at the same time an active member architect Thomas Dawes. According to of the King’s Chapel. Bulfinch’s son Rev. John G. Palfrey, writing in 1824, “Mr. Charles, ten years old at the time of the Copley and Major Dawes presented plans construction of the Brattle Square Church, for the new building.” Copley is known to may as a result have experienced his ar- have designedhis own house, and his draw- chitectural “awakening” which occurred ing of 1771for piazza additions to it seems at about that time.4 to mark the introduction of this feature to Thomas Dawess’ Church in Brattle Square FIG. 2. CHURCH IN BRATTLE SQUARE, BOSTON. Perspectiveof the originalbuilding of ca. 1773. (Conjectural restoration drawings by the author.) New England. Little else is known of his architectural work.s Dawes, a “real friend” of John Han- cock, was later deacon of the Old South Society for whom he had recently com- pleted a design in 1770for a block of stores having a pedimented Palladian pavilion on its front facade (see Appendix A). These FIG. 3. POSSIBLE PARTIAL DESIGN stores, considerably enlarged from the SOURCE FOR THE CHURCH IN BRATTLE original scheme, were erected as “South SQUARE, BOSTON. Design for a church in Row” on Washington Street in 1800, with Leeds, Yorkshire, by William Halfpenny. From The Art of Sound Building (London, 1725). Dawes acting as agent. In 1782, Dawes “drew the plan,” as we are told in his eulogy by Rev. JosephEckley, for the reno- vation of Old South after it was gutted by and the apparent favorite of James Bow- the British during the occupation. In 1784- doin, was not accepted by the building 85, he redesigned the interior of the Old committee. This was, as related in the First Church on Cornhill, later Washing- building committee’s letter to Copley, be- ton, Street, and added a two-story portico. cause the cost of its construction would Both changes at the First Church, accord- “much exceed the funds the Society de- ing to its records, were made “agreeable to pended upon for the purpose.” Thus, Colonel Dawes’s plan.“6 Thomas Dawes’s design was adopted.’ Copley’s design for Brattle Square, of While perhaps more restrained than Cop- which little is known except that it was ley’s, neverthelessit was to inspire others “admired for its elegance and grandeur” with its innovative characteristics. 4 Old- Time New England Dawes’s design for the Brattle Square Church incorporated elements of Old South, a traditional meetinghouse with its main entrance on the long side, and King’s Chapel (ca. 1750), the Gibbs-inspired An- glican Church which had its pulpit opposite the gable-end tower entrance. Other fea- tures were derived from Peter Harrison’s Christ Church in Cambridge, Ma. (ca. 1761). While Dawes retained an Ionic col- umned side entrance portico at the Brattle Square Church, he provided its outside corners with quoins, and ornamented the tower facade with a pedimented pavilion having a Doric frontispiece and a Palladian window at the front, a combination un- precedented in New England (fig. 2).* Dawes may have seen a church design shown in William Halfpenny’s Art of Sound Building (1725) which has some of these feature (fig. 3); however he also de- rived many of its details from designs for Marybone Chapel and St. Martin-in-the- Fields in his own copy of James Gibbs’s Book of Architecture (1739). The sanctuary’s beautifully carved pulpit and massive Corinthian columns of colossal J 0%. d/h /a, B WTMT alF.ErlsG IlcaaK.nwlhlrr.’ tt.r scale led to a description as late as 1843that “in its interior aspect it is one of the most FIG. 4. MEETINGHOUSE OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, CA. solemn and imposing churches in the 1774-75.Perspective view, from Massachusetfs city.“9 Magazine (August 1789)1:469. Influence The original Brattle Square Church de- sign had far-reaching influence. Although a spire was never completed at Boston, the Boston, who had done part of the carpentry now-famous First Baptist Meetinghouse of work at Brattle Square, was hired to 1775in Providence (fig. 4), still extant, was superintend the First Baptist’s construc- completed on a similar design. Its entrance tion, along with Joseph Brown of Prov- pavilion and meetinghouse-church hybrid idence. The building committee from Prov- plan, unprecedented in any pattern book, idence, instructed “to view the different were derived at least in part from the Brat- churches and meetinghouses” in Boston tle Square Church design. Two facts con- and “to make a memorandum of their sev- nect the later Providence church with the eral dimensions and forms of architec- Church in Brattle Square. Not only was the ture,” undoubtedly saw not only the Brat- building committee of the Providence tle Square Church under construction, but church sent to Boston in February of 1774 also probably viewed Dawes’s “plans” for to look at churches but James Sumner of it.r” Thomas Dawes’s Church in Brattle Square 5 was not uncommon in the eighteenth cen- tury. Its design is markedly similar to that of Dawes’s Brattle Square Church, having its innovative pedimented pavilion with front Palladian “Venetian” window over the frontispiece, quoins at the comers, and hybrid meetinghouse-churchinterior plan. Some modifications were undoubtedly de- rived from observations made at Peter Har- rison’s King’s Chapel, also based on Gibbs’s Book of Architecture, as well as Joseph Brown’s own copy of Gibbs.” While Brown’s church was perhaps more faithful to the Gibbs prototypes, Dawes’s designappears to have been a more original composition. Charles Bulfinch seems to have had his first architectural awakening (which took the form of a crude drawing of a Corinthian column) at the time of construction of his uncle Samuel Cooper’s church in Brattle Square, where the family kept a pew (fig. 6). While the massive Corinthian columns of the interior of the church may have pro- vided the inspiration (such was the view from the Bulfinch pew, Number IO), it is also known that Bulfinch was associated FIG. 5. ALTERNATIVE DESIGNS FOR with Dawes on several later projects, SPIRE, ST. MARTIN-IN-THE-FIELDS, LONDON. Plate 30, annotated“ providence,” among which were the Old State House in Thomas Dawess’ copy of James Gibbs, A Colonnade and Triumphal Arch (1789), Book of Architecture (London, 1739). New State House (1787-98), Stoughton Hall at Harvard (1804), and Faneuil Hall (1805).‘2 Bulfinch later designedone church of his own which had a Palladian pavilion appar- ently derived from Dawes’s Brattle Square Above the design for the First Baptist’s design; a second Bulfinch church evolved spire in Dawes’s own copy of Gibb’s Book from it with a modified pavilion concept.