NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
AWEEKLY-JOURNAL DEVOTED-TO-THE: BEST: INTERESTS:OF- THENORTHSHORE 
Vol. I. No. 15 
BEVERLY, MASS., SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 1904 
Three Cents 
Entere1] as second-class matter May 23, 1904, at the post-office at Beverly, Mass., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879. 
THE OLD-TIME MEETING- 
HOUSE. 
BY D. F. LAMSON. 
In the history of religion, the sanc- 
tuary or meeting-house stands as the 
outward and visible symbol of inward 
and invisible truths. In ali countries 
and ages ecclesiastical architecture 
has embodied man’s religious ideas 
and expressed his religious wants, 
whether in the cumbrous, low-browed 
Egyptian, the light, up-springing 
Gothic, or the plain, sturdy Puritan. 
The New England meeting-house has 
a character and history of its own, 
altogether out of proportion often to 
its size and appearance. It is asso- 
ciated with some of the greatest 
names and grandest movements in 
our nation’s history. 
The most prominent object in the 
New England landscape a century 
ago was not the school house or the 
town house or the factory, but the 
meeting-house; it stood often upon a 
hill, and could be seen for miles 
around; it was generally the most 
conspicuous object, with itslong range 
of horse-sheds in the rear, on the 
village green; it was the point from 
which distances were reckoned from 
town to town. It fitly symbolized the 
place which the church occupied for 
at least two centuries in New England 
thought and life. The first meeting- 
houses were often comparatively rude 
structures, and sometimes remained 
for years in a more or less unfinished 
state. But this was owing to the 
straightened circumstances of the 
people, rather than to any lack of 
reverence for the place of worship. 
If the meeting-house was a rude and 
unsightly affair, the dwellings were, 
as a rule, more rude and unsightly 
still. No New England prophet could 
justly arraign the people for dwelling 
in their ‘‘ceiled houses”? while the 
house of God lay “waste.’”’ Gradu- 
ally, as the condition of the colonists 
improved, larger and better meeting- 
houses took the place of the buildings 
which at first sufficed the simple 
wants of the pecple, as frame dwell- 
ings of some pretensions superseded 
the cabins and log-houses of the 
pioneers. 
The style of architecture remained, 
= however, very simple and 
BUILT IN 3809. 
The Congregational Church in Manchester-by-the-Sea 
is one of the finest types of church architecture of a cen- 
Its open belfry is unique, only 
tury ago in the country. 
a few such being known in the State. 
Bo. 
was but little varied. In 
such towns as Boston there 
was some attempt to imi- 
tate the style introduced 
by Sir Christopher Wren, 
in London, after the great 
fire of 1666. The Park 
street church, and Christ 
church on Salem street 
(popularly known as the 
Old North), in the belfry 
of which Paul Revere’s Jan- 
terns are supposed to have 
been hung; St. Paul’s in 
New York, the First Bap- 
tist meeting-house in Prov- 
idence, ‘erected for the 
worship of God and to hold 
commencements in,” are 
noble examples. But the 
general style was that of a 
plain parallelograrn, two 
stories in height, with pitched roof; 
there were two rows of windows, 
and often a square tower on the end, 
surmounted by a belfry ora steeple of 
modest proportions. Sometimes the 
main entrance was by a side porch, 
often two stories in height and giving 
eu 
BUILT IN 1869. 
The First Calvinistic Baptist Church of 
Beverly, built in 1869 and remodelled about 
six years ago, of gothic architecture, is a 
good example of the type of church of the 
last quarter century. 
admittance to the galleries. It was 
from sucha porch of the Old South 
church, on the Common in Worcester, 
that the Declaration of Independence, 
brought by an express rider on a 
foaming horse, was read to the people 
some hours before it reached Boston. 
Some of these old meeting-houses 
were dignified and comely structures, 
but the most were devoid of al] archi- 
tectural taste. The wood-cuts in 
Barber’s Historical collections of Mas- 
sachusetts and Connecticut are wit- 
ness to this. These buildings, once 
filled on the Sabbath by a devout 
congregation, now often appear like 
[Continued on p. 10, 3d col.] 
