First Church in Boston, Puritan church in Boston, US
The First Church in Boston is a Protestant church in the Back Bay neighborhood, located at the corner of Berkeley Street and Marlborough Street. Its street-facing facade features Gothic stone arches from the late 1800s, while the interior was entirely rebuilt in the 1970s.
The congregation was founded in 1630 by John Winthrop and his companions, making it the first officially recognized church in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A fire in 1968 destroyed most of the 19th-century building, and architect Paul Rudolph was commissioned to design a new interior behind the surviving facade.
The congregation shifted from Calvinist to Unitarian beliefs during the 1800s, and that change still shapes how the community gathers here today. Services and events tend to draw a mix of longtime members and curious visitors from the neighborhood.
The church sits in the heart of Back Bay and is easy to reach on foot from the Boylston or Copley stops on the Green Line. Since it is an active congregation, it is worth planning your visit outside of service times if you want to look around without interruption.
Paul Rudolph deliberately chose exposed concrete for the post-1968 interior, creating a sharp contrast with the Gothic stone facade that frames the entrance. The result is one of the few buildings in Boston where two radically different styles meet face to face within a single structure.
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