Organized January 26, 1897, the Immanuel Baptist Church’s building was located at 191 Adams Street next to the municipal building in Fields Corner. They purchased this building from the Central Congregational Church in 1898 for $16,500.
From the Dorchester Beacon:
New Church Movement
Central Congregational Church Sells Its Property – New Institutional Church to Be Established under Baptist Auspices
An important transfer of church property is about to be made at Field’s Corner. The Central Congregational church has received from the Baptist City Missionary society, an offer of $15,000 [actual final price was $16,500] for the church edifice situated at the corner of Adams and Arcadia streets. This sum will completely cancel the church debt and leave a balance of $5550 to the credit of the society. The building will be partially remodeled and used by the Immanuel Baptist church, which has been holding services in the post-office building, and new intends gradually to enlarge its work on institutional lines. … Immanuel Baptist church, the buyer of the property, has accomplished an amount of good in Dorchester of which most citizens of the district have little conception. The work has been quietly and unobtrusively done, and some of it is already institutional in its nature. There is already the beginning of a free dispensary, a nurse is supported, and a large amount of relief work has been done, both individually and in cooperation with other charitable societies. The Field’s Corner section resembles more closely than does any other section in Boston the field of work now commanding the effort of the Ruggles Street Baptist church, which is, as most know, one of the leading institutional churches of our city. Most of the saloons in Dorchester are located in that vicinity mentioned, and for many reasons it is becoming necessary that the church should be more than the religious, or even the social centre, of the neighborhood. The institutional church is thus far the best attempt at solution of the problem. …”
In 1930 its Pastor was:
Ralph Leslie Rood
The church building burned in the 1980s, and the site is now a parking lot.
The Fire (From the Boston Globe)
Feb. 24, 1983
Fire struck the Immanuel Baptist Church at 191 Adams St. in Dorchester yesterday, destroying the top two floors of the religious home of a small Hispanic congregation, firefighters reported. The blaze began at 5:15 p.m. in the second floor office of the pastor, Rev. Juan Phillips, firefighters at the scene said, and spread to the steeple before it was brought under control at 6 p.m. Firefighters estimated the damage at $25,000. Rev. Phillips said the steeple housed the church’s library and records.
“I was just in the process of buying insurance, so we didn’t have any,” Rev. Phillips said as he watched firefighters pry planks of charred wood from the 90-year-old building. He said his congregation of 45 Hispanics is “too small and too poor” to contribute to repairing the church building. Firefighters and policemen said they suspect the fire may be the result of arson, and that the arson squad is investigating.
The building next to the church, the Fields Corner Municipal Building at 195 Adams st., has gone up in flames several times in the past month, firefighters said, and has been under 24-hour surveillance last few weeks. “The proximity and the timing make this fire look all too suspicious,” one policeman at the scene said of the church’s fire.
The Hispanic congregation has been using the Immanuel Baptist Church as its home since 1976, Rev. Phillips said.
Source:
Dorchester Old and New, 1630-1930. (Dorchester: Chapple Publishing Company for the Dorchester, Massachusetts, Tercentenary Committee, 1930)