Four years a church.
A century and a half
of everything else.
The Meetinghouse has been a parish, a town hall, a schoolroom, a dance floor and a stage. Only the first one didn't last.
Built for a congregation
that couldn't keep it.
Lowell architect Daniel G. Bean drew the plans. Local builders John Hart and Amos Morse raised the frame. The meetinghouse went up across 1853 and 1854 for Townsend Harbor's Unitarian Society, a short walk from a railroad depot busy enough, at the time, to justify it.
The bell went first.
The parish struggled almost from the day the doors opened. In 1856 the congregation sold the steeple bell to cover its debts, and in April 1857 the Unitarian Society dissolved altogether.
The building had held religious services for four years. It stood empty after that.
Saved by a charter.
Rather than let Townsend Harbor lose its only meetinghouse, local residents formed the First Parish Religious Society in 1884 and took title to the building.
The religious charter was the whole point: it kept the property tax-free while the hall did work that was, in practice, entirely secular.
The long, useful middle.
For more than a century the meetinghouse was simply the room the village used — town meetings, schools, dances, concerts, theatrical performances and social suppers.
-
1893
Emery Hall
Postmaster Charles Emery funded an interior overhaul that took out the original pews. For a while afterward the building carried his name.
-
1923
The lights come on
Electricity reached the meetinghouse, and the hall's evenings got considerably longer.
-
1970s–80s
A quieter stretch
After decades of light use, the building briefly housed non-profit youth training programs.
-
1981
The Society takes title
The Townsend Historical Society acquired the property, adding it to the historic Townsend Harbor holdings it keeps today.
Repaired, up to code,
and back in use.
Under the Society's Old Harbor Village initiative the meetinghouse has been structurally repaired and brought up to current building codes.
It now does four jobs at once: community event space, visitor orientation point, rentable function hall, and historic landmark in its own right. Every event held here helps pay for the next round of upkeep.
Townsend Historical Society
Owner and steward of the Meetinghouse since 1981, and of the historic Townsend Harbor properties around it. Visit THS website
Old Harbor Village
The Society's open-air museum campus. The Meetinghouse is one of its buildings. Visit OHV website
