New Sharon Congregational Church

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New Sharon Congregational Church
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Location21 Cape Cod Hill Road, New Sharon, Maine
Coordinates 44°38′10″N70°0′50″W / 44.63611°N 70.01389°W / 44.63611; -70.01389 Coordinates: 44°38′10″N70°0′50″W / 44.63611°N 70.01389°W / 44.63611; -70.01389
Area1 acre (0.40 ha)
Built1845
Architectural styleMid 19th Century Revival
NRHP reference # 85001261 [1]
Added to NRHPJune 20, 1985

The New Sharon Congregational Church is a historic church at 21 Cape Cod Hill Road in New Sharon, Maine. Built in 1845, this brick structure is an example of Greek Revival architecture, and stands as a focal point of the rural town's center. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. [1] The church is affiliated with the United Church of Christ.

New Sharon, Maine Town in Maine, United States

New Sharon is a town in Franklin County, Maine, United States, incorporated in 1794. The population was 1,407 at the 2010 census. The town is roughly bisected by the Sandy River a tributary of the Kennebec River.

National Register of Historic Places Federal list of historic sites in the United States

The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred in preserving the property.

United Church of Christ Protestant Christian denomination

The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in the United States, with historical confessional roots in the Congregational, Reformed, and Lutheran traditions, and with approximately 4,882 churches and 824,866 members. The United Church of Christ is a historical continuation of the General Council of Congregational Christian churches founded under the influence of New England Pilgrims and Puritans. Moreover, it also subsumed the third largest Reformed group in the country, the German Reformed. The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches united in 1957 to form the UCC. These two denominations, which were themselves the result of earlier unions, had their roots in Congregational, Lutheran, Evangelical, and Reformed denominations. At the end of 2014, the UCC's 5,116 congregations claimed 979,239 members, primarily in the U.S. In 2015, Pew Research estimated that 0.4 percent, or 1 million adult adherents, of the U.S. population self-identify with the United Church of Christ.

Contents

Description and history

The New Sharon Congregational Church is a rectangular brick structure, facing southeast on a rise overlooking the residential center of the town of New Sharon. It has a front-facing gable roof, with a clapboarded pediment. Its tower, rising from the ridge behind the main facade, begins with a square stage that has wide lancet-arch windows divided by a thin vertical strip, finished in clapboards and topped by a low balustrade and corner turrets. The second stage is an octagonal belfry with lancet-arched louvers, topped by a thin railing with turreted posts. A slightly bell-cast octagonal dome and weathervane top the tower. The main facade has two symmetrically-placed entrances and a tall raised window at the center. The only ornamentation in the brickwork are projecting pillars and entablature at the corners and roofline. [2]

The church was built in 1845 to replace an earlier wood-frame building destroyed by fire. This older building had been built in 1816 as a common meeting house for four different denominations; the Baptists, Methodists, and Unitarians had all eventually built their own buildings, leaving the original with the Congregationalists. The rise the building stands on includes a large grassy area, which is the nearest thing New Sharon has to a town common. [2]

See also

National Register of Historic Places listings in Franklin County, Maine Wikimedia list article

This is a list of the National Register of Historic Places listings in Franklin County, Maine.

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References

  1. 1 2 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  2. 1 2 "NRHP nomination for New Sharon Congregational Church". National Park Service. Retrieved 2015-02-16.