St. Thomas Church, Gothic Revival church building in Ripton, Vermont.
St. Thomas Church is a Roman Catholic church in Underhill Center, Vermont, built 1891–92 to designs by self-taught architect George H. Guernsey. The Vermont Division for Historic Preservation describes it as Victorian Gothic, with a raised granite foundation, buttressed walls with bevelled stone shoulder blocks, and a 100 ft spire. Its front gable holds a large floral tracery window inside a lancet arch framing the entrance.
The first St. Thomas Church, a wooden frame building raised on 4 June 1855 for 63 Irish immigrant farming and logging families, burned down on 19 December 1890. Its replacement, designed by George H. Guernsey, had its cornerstone laid on 12 August 1891 before about 1,000 attendees; the first Mass was held in the basement that Christmas and in the church proper on Christmas Day 1892.
The parish served 63 Irish immigrant farming and logging families when the wooden church was raised in 1855. The bell installed on 25 August 1895, cast at the McShane Foundry in Baltimore, weighs 2,900 lb and bears the name St. James. The basement hall originally held a dining hall, kitchen, stage, office, cloak room and smoking rooms.
The church stands on the west side of Underhill Center's crossroads, where land was added to the property in 1856. The site was levelled by removing thousands of yards of earth from a bank at the rear, work finished only in 1898. Cement steps were installed at the main entrance in 1943.
The 2,900 lb bell installed on 25 August 1895 was cast at the McShane Foundry in Baltimore and christened St. James; its inscription records it as a gift from the congregation. Guernsey, a self-taught architect and one-term mayor of Montpelier in 1897, also designed St. Augustine Church in Montpelier and Immaculate Heart of Mary in Rutland.
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