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United Congregational Church

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1832, 1871, 1974, 1986. 1 Commons
  • United Congregational Church (John M. Miller)

The church building began as a plain, clapboarded meeting house, three bays deep, with little vertical emphasis. It changed in 1871 with the elevation of the original meetinghouse over a tall basement floor, to permit Sunday school and church social activities downstairs. This levitation of the church required the addition in front of an enclosure for a stair and entrance foyer, which are topped by a belfry and a commanding polygonal needle spire, all in Victorian carpentered Gothic. White paint outside and the recent renovation of the plaster barrel-vaulted interior toward its presumed original appearance are meant to invoke as much as possible an ideal version of the kind of colonial or Federal architecture expected on a New England common. But the architectural distinction of the church is its Victorian addition—one of the finest such wooden Victorian spires in the state.

Writing Credits

Author: 
William H. Jordy et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

Little Compton Commons
William Wilbor House
American Legion Hall (Number 8 Schoolhouse)
Seabury–Richmond–Burchard House
Seaborn Mary

Citation

William H. Jordy et al., "United Congregational Church", [Little Compton, Rhode Island], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/RI-01-LC25.

Print Source

Buildings of Rhode Island, William H. Jordy, with Ronald J. Onorato and William McKenzie Woodward. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, 496-496.

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