Charles Street Meeting House
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The Charles Street Meeting House, at 70 Charles Street, Boston, Massachusetts is a historic church in Beacon Hill built in 1804 to designs by architect Asher Benjamin.
The meeting house's original congregation was the Third Baptist Church, which used the nearby Charles River for its baptisms. In the years before the American Civil War, it was a stronghold of the anti-slavery movement, and was the site of notable speeches from anti-slavery activists Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. In the 20th century it housed an African Methodist Episcopal from 1876 to 1939, a short time as a Albanian Orthodox and lastly as an Universalist Church of America congregation from 1949 to 1961, then Unitarian Universalist Association after merger from 1961 to 1979. This was an Universalist experimental church.
In the 1980's, local architect John Sharratt bought the church and converted it for his offices and retail space. The Meeting House is part of the Boston Black Heritage Trail.
[edit] References
- A Bold Experiment: The Charles Street Universalist Meeting House edited by Maryell Cleary (2002, Meadville Lombard Theological School Press, Chicago) ISBN 0-9702479-3-1
