Churches

At 486 Main Street is the First Seventh Day Baptist Church ( HO10.1; 1836), a small, severe Greek Revival box, its sills at ground level, with simple entrance centered on the windowless facade and three large, round-arched windows on each of the side elevations. (Was the ample fenestration of the side elevations an attempt to compensate for the blind facade?) Finally, at the Town House Road–Main Street intersection is the Second Seventh Day Baptist Church ( HO10.2; c. 1790, 1826–1827, 1861), 2 Town House Road, another simple box of a church, but with narrow, almost prim windows on both front and side elevations and embellished with a square-plan round-arched cupola. Originally a nondenominational chapel, it was moved here by the town in the early nineteenth century for use as the town hall. After the “new” town hall, immediately across Town House Road, was completed in 1861, the building reverted to worship space, this time for Baptists. The north-facing building fronts on a triangular parcel with the town's World War I monument at its apex. Church, town hall, and open space achieve a compelling civic presence whose modesty seems appropriate for this diminutive “city.”