Brattle Square Angels and two frieze panels
Photo: friendsofsdarch

The angels are back! After nearly a decade’s hiatus, the historic frieze and the four angelic beanblowers have returned!

Look up in the Back Bay and once again you’ll see the top of the First Baptist Church’s bell tower in all its Victorian glory. The decorations on that tower speak to Boston’s history, religion, art, and architecture.

For nearly ten years, the top of the bell tower has been covered by a black cage of scaffolding and scrim during a restoration project. Now, at long last, the covering has gone. Look up and you will see a carved stone frieze wrapping around the tower’s four sides with tall angels at the corners blowing golden horns.

The Brattle Square Church

Located at the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Clarendon Street, the First Baptist Church began its history serving members of a totally different religious faith.

The old Brattle Square Church

The Brattle Square congregation first worshiped in a meeting house of Late Colonial design that stood where Boston City Hall now anchors Government Center. Completed just before the Revolutionary War (except for its steeple), the building suffered insults and indignities at the hands of British soldiers during the occupation of the city.

By the nineteenth century, this meeting house had grown to be the most prominent among Boston’s liberal churches in size, prestige, and intellectual leadership. Its notable members included Gov. John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adamms, Harrison Gray Otis, Daniel Webster, Dr. John Warren, and Chief Justice Parker.

By 1852, however, the Brattle Square neighborhood was changing along with architectural fashions. The old church had ceased to be elegant and Brattle Square was no longer a fashionable place to live. The congregation decided to build a new, more elegant church and they hired Henry Hobson Richardson to design it. The new structure was the architect’s first important commission and his first church.

New Church in the New Land

The First Baptist Church from Commonwealth Ave.

The new structure was erected between 1870 and 1872 in what we now call the Back Bay, but which was known at the time as the New Land. In his design for the Brattle Square Church, H.H. Richardson used Romanesque forms for the first time, He would refine them a few years later for Trinity Church.

Richardson built the church in a cruciform pattern of native Roxbury Conglomerate, better known as Puddingstone, laid in random ashlar.

Three very large rose windows light up each of the ends of the cross-gabled roof. The Baptists later added stained glass.

The Bell Tower

The 176-foot tall, square bell tower,

“…stands in the angle between nave and transept, resting on four piers connected by round arches. This forms the carriage porch which opens onto a low, arcaded portico or vestibule that is built out flush with the face of the tower from end to the transept.”

‘Henry Hobson Richardson and His Works”
Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer

The tower incorporates quoins and cornerstones from the 1772 meeting house in Brattle Square. One cornerstone displays the name of “John Hancock, esq. July 27, 1772 and “Jno. Greenleaf 1772.” Both men were members and benefactors of the original congregation.

The tower has corbelled arches topped by a low-peaked overhanging roof and it holds the bell from the Colonial Meeting House, cast in 1809.

The Frieze of the Sacraments

Beneath those arches at the top of the tower is a remarkable frieze that was designed by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi in Paris as his first major commission in the United States. It was carved by Italian workmen after the stones had been set in place.

The frieze represents the four Christian sacraments, one for each panel. They are:

• Baptism on the east side facing Clarendon Street
• Communion on the north side, facing Commonwealth Avenue
• Marriage on the south side, facing toward Newbury Street and
• Death on the west side, facing toward Dartmouth Street.

The Baptism Frieze

Although it’s difficult to see the frieze in detail from the street, it contains the likenesses of some prominent Bostonians—and Unitarians—of the day. These include Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Sumner.

The Four Holy Beanblowers

A Brattle Square angel

The four angels at the corners hold downward-facing horns that were gilded then and have been freshly re-gilded. This display earned the Brattle Square Church the nickname of “Church of the Holy Beanblowers.” Whether this term is derogatory or affectionate depends on the historian’s interpretation.

The best way to see the Marriage panel of the frieze with the faces of Abraham Lincoln and Giuseppe Garibaldi, as well as two of the angels with their golden beanblowers, is from one of the top floors of 535 Boylston Street, over a block away.  I went there once on business and found myself looking out a widow almost directly at the figures on the frieze. They seemed so close and so lifelike, it startled me.

The story of how the Unitarian congregation lost their Richardsonian church and the Baptists took it over is too long to go into here. Besides, it deserves its own blog post.

Directions to the Holy Beanblowers

First Baptist Church
110 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02116

Phone: 1-617-267-3148

The closest T stop is Copley, although you can also get off at Arlington and walk west.
You can find parking at the Prudential Center.

When you get to the church, look up!