{"nrhp_refnum":"80000619","name":"St. John`s Catholic Church","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"40 Temple St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Worcester","county":"Worcester County","state":"MA","lat":42.259745174000045,"lon":-71.79636867099998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1980-03-05","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Religion","Social History"],"significance_levels":["state","local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"St. John's Roman Catholic Church is a brick Greek Revival church at 40 Temple Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, built in 1845-46 with a rear addition in 1884 planned by P.W. Ford of Boston.","why_significant":"It is the oldest church building in Worcester and the city's only example of Greek Revival church architecture. It also houses Worcester's oldest Catholic parish, founded in 1834, which was central to establishing Catholicism in central Massachusetts and to the history of Irish immigrants in the area.","narrative":"Brick walls, a granite plinth and a pedimented central pavilion mark St. John's Roman Catholic Church on Temple Street in Worcester. Completed by June 1846 on a site cleared in 1845, it is the city's oldest church building and its only Greek Revival church. A square tower with a wooden belfry rises above the facade, though the present spire dates from the 1940s. Side walls are divided into bays by paired brick piers, each holding an arched window. P.W. Ford of Boston planned rear additions in 1884 that left the facade unchanged. The parish dates to 1834, when Father James Fitton began serving about 80 mostly Irish Catholics, and a first wooden church was finished in 1835. As immigration grew in the 1840s, the congregation outgrew that building. St. John's later became known as the mother church of the Springfield diocese, and it supported schools and social services. Membership reached 15,000 by 1910, and Ascension Church was created from the parish in 1911.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"P.W. Ford (1884 addition)","architectural_style":"Greek Revival","criteria":[],"status_note":"Still in use as a church; the spire was altered around 1940 and the parochial schools have been demolished.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:11:54.480038-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/3/7930/63793003/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/80000619.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/80000619/46c486ed9e-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/80000619/46c486ed9e-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Pvmoutside","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._John%27s_Church_Worcester_MA.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Pvmoutside</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St._John%27s_Church_Worcester_MA.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63793003","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_Catholic_Church_(Worcester,_Massachusetts)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7588596"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/worcester-county/st-johns-catholic-church-80000619/"}