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Historical Materials: Gloucester Buildings & Businesses
Historical Materials » Gloucester Buildings & Businesses » Baptist Church (Old, First, 1830) (Pleasant Street)
Baptist Church (Old, First, 1830) (Pleasant Street)
View related Fitz Henry Lane catalog entries (6) »
The old Baptist church appears in several Lane works. This was the first of three Baptist churches built on Pleasant Street. Baptists had been meeting on Cape Ann since 1808, originally in Sandy Bay (Rockport). But in 1830, a small group of Gloucester Baptists raised the funds to build a simple, unornamented, steeple-less white wooden building and chose this site near Franklin Square. Lane lithographs and paintings document the history of the building. In 1836, he showed it without a steeple. The building was improved in 1837 with the addition of a choir and the steeple, as seen in Lane's 1844 painting.
The building was not a church at the time of the painting of Gloucester Harbor in 1852, where it can be seen between the square four-spiked steeple of the First Parish Church and the mast of the closest, central boat. The Baptists, having recently built the large Italianate church seen just to the right in that 1852 painting, had sold the old Baptist church to Benjamin S. Corliss and other neighbors in 1850. Then in 1855, the Catholic community of Gloucester bought and moved the old church building around the corner to Prospect Street. The first Catholic mass had been held in 1849, in a private home, although the town hall was also available for masses. By 1855, the Catholic community established St. Ann's Parish, first in the old Baptist building (once again without a steeple, probably lost during the move from Pleasant Street), and then, when the current large stone church was built in 1876, this building became a school. It was replaced by the still-standing brick St. Ann's Parochial School in 1913.
– Sarah Dunlap (August, 2013)
Newspaper clipping
Cape Ann Advertiser
Collection of Fred and Stephanie Buck
"LANE'S PAINTINGS were distributed on Saturday last among the subscribers, as follows: Harbor Scene, – Thaddeus Friend. View of Bear Island, – George Marsh. Good Harbor Beach, – Mrs. J. H. Stacy. Fancy Sketch, – Capt. Charles Fitz. Scene at Town Parish, – J. H. Johnson, Salem. Beach Scene, – Pattillo & Center. View near Done Fudging, – Ripley Ropes, Salem."
View related Fitz Henry Lane catalog entries (1) »
Also filed under: Alex Patillo Dry Goods » // Center & Co. » // Center, Henry » // Done Fudging » // Fitz, Capt. Charles » // Friend, Thaddeus » // Johnson, J. H. » // Marsh, George » // Newspaper / Journal Articles » // Patillo, Alex » // Ropes, Ripley » // Stacy, Mr. and Mrs. John Hancock »
44 x 34 in.
Henry Francis Walling, Map of the Towns of Gloucester and Rockport, Essex Co. Massachusetts. Philadelphia, A. Kollner, 1851
Cape Ann Museum Library & Archive
"Map of the Towns of Gloucester and Rockport, Massachusetts. H.F. Walling, Civil Engineer. John Hanson, Printer. 1851. Population of Gloucester in 1850 7,805. Population of Rockport in 1850 3,213."
Also filed under: Burnham Brothers Marine Railway » // Duncan's Point » // Five Pound Island » // Flake Yard » // Gloucester Harbor, Inner / Harbor Cove » // Harbor Methodist Church (Prospect Street) » // Low (Frederick G.) wharves » // Pavilion Hotel » // Procter Brothers » // Ropewalk » // Vincent's Cove » // Western Shore »