All Souls Congregational Church is an historic church at 10 Broadway in

Bangor, Maine Bangor ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Penobscot County, Maine, United States. The city proper has a population of 31,753, making it the state's List of municipalities in Maine, third-most populous city, behind Portland, Maine, Portland ...

. Built in 1911, it is a landmark in the city, designed by the noted proponent of the Gothic Revival,

Ralph Adams Cram Ralph Adams Cram (December 16, 1863 – September 22, 1942) was a prolific and influential American architect of collegiate and ecclesiastical buildings, often in the Gothic Revival style. Cram & Ferguson and Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson are partn ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1992. The church is affiliated with the

United Church of Christ The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a socially liberal mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in the United States, with historical and confessional roots in the Congregational, Restorationist, Continental Reformed, and Lutheran t ...

; the current pastor is Rev. Chad L. Poland.

Architecture and history

The All Souls Church is located on the fringe of downtown Bangor, on a rise east of Kenduskeag Stream that overlooks the central business district. It occupies an entire city block, bounded by State, French, and York Streets, and by Stetson Square and Broadway to the east. The main sanctuary is a cruciform stone structure, with its long axis oriented east-west, with the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the Choir (architecture), choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may termi ...

set at the western end. It has a steeply pitched gabled roof, with a relatively slender tower set at the crossing. A shorter square bell tower is set at the southeast corner of the crossing. The main facade faces east, and has a center entrance set in an arched recess, with a large rose window above. The building's corners and side walls are buttressed. The First Congregational Church first built on this site in 1822. That building burned down in 1830, and was replaced by a building designed by Charles Pond. This was replaced in 1859 by a structure designed by Harvey Graves in 1859, using the foundation of the previous building. The Graves church burned down in the

Great Fire of 1911 The Great Fire of 1911 took place in Bangor, Maine, United States, on April 30 and May 1, 1911. A small fire that started in a downtown shed went out of control and destroyed hundreds of commercial and residential buildings. History It started ...

. The First Congregation then joined forces with the Third Congregation, whose 1902 church was also destroyed in the fire, to build a new church on the site of the First's old one. They commissioned the noted Gothic Revival proponent

to design the building, which incorporates stone elements of the Third's building. It was built at a cost of $110,000. Its stained glass windows, designed by Boston stained glass artist Charles J. Connick, were added between 1913 and 1947. The building was expanded in 1953–54 with the addition of a school building, designed by local architect Eaton W. Tarbell. This addition was designed in a

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

style but was intended to harmonize with and defer to the original building. It is now named for Arlan A. Baillie.

References

External links

All Souls Congregational Church Bangor web site
{{Authority control United Church of Christ churches in Maine Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine Gothic Revival church buildings in Maine Churches completed in 1911 Buildings and structures in Bangor, Maine National Register of Historic Places in Bangor, Maine Churches in Penobscot County, Maine

Architecture and history

See also

References

External links