{"nrhp_refnum":"85003312","name":"Saint Paul's Church, Chapel, and Parish House","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"15 and 27 Saint Paul St. and 104 Aspinwall Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Brookline","county":"Norfolk County","state":"MA","lat":42.346332604000054,"lon":-71.11844094699995,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1985-10-17","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Religion","Social History"],"significance_levels":["national","state","local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A complex of Episcopal church buildings at 15 and 27 St. Paul Street and 104 Aspinwall Avenue in Brookline, Massachusetts, made up of a Gothic church (1851-52), a chapel now used as a parish hall (1858) and a parish house (1895), all built of Roxbury puddingstone.","why_significant":"The church, designed by Richard Upjohn, is described as a fine example of a picturesque village church and as one of the earliest and most important of its kind in the Boston area. The parish house was designed by Julius Schweinfurth. It also reflects the mid-19th-century ecclesiological movement in the Episcopal church. It is the oldest religious structure in Brookline and Upjohn's only ecclesiastical work there.","narrative":"St. Paul's Church, Chapel and Parish House form an Episcopal complex at Aspinwall Avenue and St. Paul Street in Brookline. The congregation was founded in 1849, and Augustus Aspinwall donated the land. Richard Upjohn, architect of Trinity Church in New York, designed the Gothic church, completed in 1852, and the chapel of 1858, now the parish hall. Both are built of Roxbury puddingstone, with tripartite arches, trefoil windows, stone tracery and a tower topped by a broached spire. Peabody and Stearns enlarged the chapel in 1880, and Julius Schweinfurth designed the 1895 parish house, linked to the church by an enclosed walkway. A fire in 1976 destroyed the church interior and most of its stained glass, but the exterior changed little apart from solar panels. It is Brookline's oldest religious building and Upjohn's only church there, and it reflects the ecclesiological movement in the Episcopal church.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"Richard Upjohn (church and chapel/parish hall); Peabody and Stearns (1880 chapel enlargement); Julius A. Schweinfurth (parish house)","architectural_style":"Gothic","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Still in use as a church, parish hall and parish house. The church interior was gutted by fire in 1976 and rebuilt in 1979-80, with solar panels added to the south roof.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:11:56.872077-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/86/7924/63792486/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/85003312.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/85003312/b475905e01-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/85003312/b475905e01-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY 3.0","author":"John Phelan","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Paul%27s_Church,_Brookline_MA.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">John Phelan</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Paul%27s_Church,_Brookline_MA.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63792486","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paul%27s_Church,_Chapel,_and_Parish_House","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7402006"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/norfolk-county/saint-pauls-church-chapel-and-parish-house-85003312/"}