Our Building
Early History
The congregation first raised a beautiful Greek Revival meetinghouse in 1845 on the Small Common in the Village of Old Cambridge. By 1866, the congregation had outgrown this building, so they sold it to a Congregational church, which moved it by oxen down Massachusetts Avenue to Porter Square in North Cambridge. OCBC then bought its present site in Quincy Square. Between 1867 and 1870 the congregation raised the present Gothic Revival church, designed by Alexander Rice Esty, which was dedicated in September 1870. In 1889, a fire engulfed the church and gutted the Massachusetts Avenue end of the building. Charles Eliot, the President of Harvard, was one of the first people to spot the fire and arrived on the scene carrying a bucket of water. The congregation undertook repairs that followed designs by Clarence Blackall, an architect famous for many of Boston’s historic theaters. A new window from Louis Comfort Tiffany, a rare example of early Tiffany ecclesiastical glass, replaced the large Parish Hall window.
Recent History
The Twentieth Century saw a number of changes to the interior of the church. The Memorial Prayer Chapel was created with windows that were dedicated to the memory of members killed in the Second World War, including the two sons of the Rev. Samuel Miller, who was OCBC’s longest-serving former pastor from 1935-58, after which he became the Dean of Harvard Divinity School. In 1982, the church building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Congregation members excavated the basement in the 1960s to make space for nonprofit groups that shared their values for peace, justice, and a better world. As a result of rental income, capital campaigns that began in 1994, and preservation grants from the city and state, the congregation was able to stabilize the tower, repoint masonry, restore many of the stained-glass windows, and replace parts of the roof. In 2000, the church entered into a long-term lease with the Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre, which shares space on all three floors of the building for classes, performances, and offices. The church has also considerably updated the building to better conserve energy and water, updates for which OCBC received a 2006 Go Green award from the City of Cambridge for building an underground storm water retention tank.