A non-profit dedicated to Jamaica Plain's historic meetinghouse and grounds
Hosting community events, celebrations, concerts, dances, and remembrances since 1769.
About the foundation
The Monument Square Meetinghouse Foundation is a non-profit (tax ID 92-2052131) dedicated to the building and grounds of First Church of Jamaica Plain and their use by the community. The building, which has stood at the historic, cultural, and civic center of JP since 1769, remains a vital resource for many organizations. Indoor spaces include a vaulted sanctuary, a dance/meeting hall with stained glass windows and A/V equipment, a kitchen, and meeting rooms. The grounds spread from a broad front lawn to an expansive graveyard and dog run.
About Monument Square
The site of the monument has long been an important crossroads. Archaeological finds show evidence of encampments and the exchange of materials among indigenous people. English colonizers selected the area for one of the earliest colonial entities, the Town of Roxbury. As population grew, a meetinghouse was built in 1769.
In 1851, the neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury seceded to become the Town of West Roxbury. Twenty years later, the town build a monument to commemorate 23 soldiers killed in the Civil War. Later, it added a Roxbury puddingstone boulder commemorating local Minutemen who fought in the American Revolution.
The City of Boston annexed adjacent towns between 1869 and 1874, converting Jamaica Plain, South Street Crossing (Roslindale), and West Roxbury into Boston neighborhoods.
The 43-acre Monument Square Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
About the Meetinghouse
The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by persecuted religious reformers who opposed ecclesiastical hierarchy and wanted self-governing parishes that would choose their own ministers. They required all new settlements to have a meetinghouse and a learned teacher, both supported by taxes. The building was the focal point of the community, where the parish residents discussed local issues, worshipped, and engaged in town business.
Jamaica Plain’s first meetinghouse/church, a wooden clapboard building, was built in 1769. During the British occupation of Boston, the Massachusetts’ colonial assembly met there, at a safe distance from the British troops. Rhode Island forces, headquartered in Commodore Loring’s evacuated mansion across Centre Street, protected them.
After the revolution, Massachusetts stopped using taxation to support the parish system, but the meetinghouse continued to be the site for community meetings and social gatherings. Notably, at the same time the new town was planning Curtis Hall to house its government, the congregation decided to replace its old wooden building with a handsome granite English Gothic Revival building completed in 1854. Designed by Nathaniel Bradlee, it features a Howard and Davis tower clock and an E. and G.G. Hook pipe organ.
Today, the meetinghouse is known as the First Church in Jamaica Plain and is on the National and State Registers of Historic Places. It hosts two congregations, Jewish and Unitarian Universalist, a multi-cultural arts enrichment afterschool program, monthly dances, a concert series, and myriad other events.