Meetinghouse JP
Hosting community events,
celebrations, concerts,
dances, and remembrances since 1769.
About the Foundation
Meetinghouse JP - aka 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. We are located at 6 Eliot Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130, United States.
About the Square
The area now known as Jamaica Plain was inhabited by indigenous populations for millennia. Archaeological evidence shows that indigenous people had long travelled along what are now known as South and Centre Streets.
The founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, persecuted religious reformers who rejected hierarchy and wanted self-governing parishes, required all new settlements to have a tax-supported meetinghouse and teacher. The first meetinghouse was built in 1769.
As the colonial population of Boston grew, municipal lines were drawn and redrawn. Jamaica Plain was first claimed by the Town of Roxbury, then by the breakaway Town of West Roxbury (1851), and finally by the City of Boston (1874). To establish itself, West Roxbury built a significant municipal building, Curtis Hall, now the community center at 20 South St. The congregation simultaneously decided to replace its wooden meetinghouse with a handsome granite English Gothic Revival building completed in 1854.
During the Civil War, 23 local soldiers were killed. Residents erected a monument to commemorate those soldiers and further establish civic identity. (Later, a Roxbury puddingstone boulder commemorating local Minutemen who fought in the American Revolution was added.)
Monument Square is the historic, cultural, and civic center of JP. The 43-acre Monument Square Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.