Over the past two years, our congregation gathered in a series of meetings large and small to talk about our hopes, dreams and imaginings for our church home.  Together, we came up with a list of priorities:

• Create a more welcoming appearance: with universal access, open doors, improved lighting, signage, and landscaping,
• Demonstrate attractiveness: repairing the clock, restoring architectural details and adding landscape features such as a fountain,
• Be accessible: universal access (everyone enters through the same front door regardless of ability) is a core value.  Design the entrance around accessibility, not as an afterthought,
• Improve security: through lighting and landscaping, 
• Reflect sustainability: with a natural, sustainable green plaza in front, well-insulated walls and windows, energy efficient lighting, and green construction methods,
• Retain our historic legacy: recreating key elements of the original design with modern materials and methods, restoring the large tower window and clock and adding interpretive signage.
• Add value to Harvard Square: with a welcoming entrance, attractive lighting and landscaping, be a gathering place for the community.
• Be creative: using color, light, and decorative elements; energy-efficiency; sustainable natural greenery in landscaping featuring a fountain; and art.

Our architect, David Torrey, took our list and listened to our vision and turned our priorities into a design for the restoration and renovation of our historic meetinghouse, pictured above, that brilliantly and sensitively captures all of our ideas.  

In the 1950s, a hurricane destroyed much of our original Carpenter Gothic detail, and, sadly, in subsequent years the large tower window and clock were left to deteriorate.  In recent years, members of the congregation and neighbors alike routinely ask, “when are you going to fix the front of your building? Despite this, our congregation remains a vibrant, active and committed Unitarian Universalist community; not only through our Sunday services, music and religious education programs, but also as a launching pad for our outreach and social justice action through the Environmental Justice Team, the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, Beyond Borders-Sin Fronteras, the Middle East Education Group, our Racial Equity Team, as well as our hosting of the Y2Y shelter for unhoused young people, Paine Senior Services, the Cambridge Forum, and, prior to the current COVID 19-related shutdown and once again as soon as possible, hosting Tuesday Meals and any number of community groups that have used our meetinghouse as a regular community gathering space.  We are the almost 400-year-old congregation in an almost 200-year-old building, the Unitarian Universalists in the heart of Harvard Square – in a very real sense, we are the heart of Harvard Square.

The congregation and community’s response to David Torrey’s design proposal has been very positive.  A guest at Y2Y said “that would be great!  I’ve seen the pictures!  Amazing!”  Denise Jillson, Executive Director of  the Harvard Square Business Association, is enthusiastic and has offered to help us garner support from the business community.  Ellana, Inc., our cost estimating consulting firm, has produced detailed cost estimates for each aspect of the proposed design, with a total cost of $3.5 million, including contingencies. We believe the cost can be covered through a combination of our endowment, available grant sources, and contributions from local businesses and other Cambridge neighbors in addition to gifts from members of our congregation.  For greater detail on the financing of this project please see this link.  

OUR VISION: We have a legacy from the past and a responsibility to future generations to create a more welcoming, beautiful, secure and usable meetinghouse, an anchor institution in Harvard Square and a symbol that reflects our church’s historical importance and spiritual presence while advancing our mission for First Parish, Harvard Square, Cambridge, and beyond.

OUR ACTION: We begin with the necessary and congregationally-requested improvements to the exterior of the Mass Avenue entrance, tower, and steeple.

Following our congregational information session  on Sunday, September 20^th, we will host a series of small-group discussions via Zoom on October 4 and 18 and November 1.  using break-out groups to gather members’ reactions, thoughts and questions. You are encouraged to use this form to submit questions and comments about the project. We will then report back to the congregation in November.  

Our project is on the agenda of the October 1 Public Hearing of the Cambridge Historical Commission.  We anticipate this will be the beginning of a series of meetings to get a “Certificate of Appropriateness” approved by CHC.  

Mindful of all that we have been given by generations past, and mindful of our hopes and wishes for the generations to come, we welcome you to join us in this conversation.