Our Lady of Lourdes Church (Calvary Episcopal Church)

This High Victorian Gothic church owes its existence in the little village of East Berkshire both to tragedy and benevolence. In 1864, Calvary Episcopal Church (1822), along with more than half of its village, was destroyed by fire. For almost a decade the congregation met in the village schoolhouse while it sought funds to rebuild. Eventually, former resident Ellen Marvin of New York City offered to build the church as a memorial to her husband, making possible one of the most refined small churches in the state. Low walls of Winooski redstone with brownstone sills, and quoined and concentrically arched brick door and window surrounds, carry the steeply pitched slate roofs of the nave, stepped chancel, and eave-side vestibule. Gothic Revival, so favored by Vermont's Episcopal Church, is evident in the pointed arches of door and windows and the wooden tracery of the belfry that rises from the roof on a flared slate base to carry an octagonal spire. A rose window with stone tracery is set within a pointed arch on the nave facade. The interior is characterized by English-made stained glass and a wooden ceiling with open beamwork that rests on stone bosses. Like a transplant from an English village, the design speaks more of the Ecclesiological orientation of the donor's New York than of the vernacular of rural Vermont. The parish, served primarily by clergy from neighboring towns, discontinued services in 1957, and the building was acquired by the Roman Catholic Church in 1972.