Image: No. 203 Postcard. Dorchester, Baptist Temple, postmarked January 2, 1909.

Located at the corner of Washington Street and Welles Avenue, the Dorchester Temple Baptist Church was organized November 8, 1886. The building was designed in 1889 by architect Arthur H. Vinal (per an 1892 City Inspection report cited in a 1997 grant application to the MHC for an MPPF grant). The building is an unusual Boston example of a Shingle style church with powerful intersecting gabled roof forms and a tower showing the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The building is used by Dorchester Temple Baptist Church and also by Iglesia Bautista Emanuel and the New Covenant Christian Center.

The church began in 1886 as a missionary church of the Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston. At this time Dorchester was a semi-rural area. In less than four years, church membership was up to 100, and Dorchester had become more of a suburb of Boston. The congregants were predominantly Nova Scotian. According to the church records, by 1928 there were 1,131 members in the church and 1,032 students in the Sunday School. After World War II, as Irish Catholics moved in Dorchester, many congregants moved to the suburbs, and attendance began to fall. In the late 1960s and early 19720 attendance continued to fall. With the help of a new pastor, by 1986 attendance was up to 120, most of the members were in their twenties and thirties, and twelve different ethnic groups were represented.

In 1930 its Pastor was:

Otis Willliams Foye

In 2005 the name of the church association using the building was Global Ministries Christian Church, Bruce H. Wall, Senior Pastor.

Source:

Dorchester Old and New, 1630-1930. (Dorchester: Chapple Publishing Company for the Dorchester, Massachusetts, Tercentenary Committee, 1930)

Religious Properties Preservation: A Boston Casebook. (Boston: Historic Boston Incorporated, 1991)

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April 15, 2020