Great Barrington — A multi-year project to restore the historic stone manse at the First Congregational Church on 241 Main Street has recently been completed.
The manse is part of the 1.5-acre complex of the church sanctuary. The church was founded in 1743, while the stone structure was completed in 1882. Construction of the manse started in 1880 with locally quarried limestone, and in 1884 it was given to the church, then known as the First Congregational Society of Great Barrington, by Mary Francis Sherwood Hopkins, the widow of railroad tycoon Mark Hopkins.
The manse, sanctuary, and carriage house of the church building were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in August 1992.
For many years, the manse served as the residence for the church’s minister and their family.
According to a previous interview with church member and project coordinator Charles Hamilton in November 2022, the congregation’s effort to restore the manse started in 2017. However, it was interrupted by the retirement of the church’s longest-serving pastor who had served the church for 30 years.
“The project was postponed for another two years until, in 2019, we hired a new minister who came to the church with her husband,” Hamilton told The Berkshire Edge. “She had been here about three months when one of the sections of the manse’s wall collapsed.” This led the church to go forward with the project.
Back at a town meeting in 2021, residents approved the church receiving $241,000 from the town via its Community Preservation Fund for the project, with an additional $225,000 from the fund in January 2023.
The church also received a $50,000 grant from the state’s Preservation Fund, as well as individual donations and a loan from Lee Bank.
Back in November 2022, Hamilton said that the total estimate for the project was around $635,000. However, he recently told The Berkshire Edge that the total cost for the project ended up tallying around $1.3 million. “What happened was that the cost escalated because of the cost of all materials and labor,” Hamilton said. “We had to deal with a much higher total cost.”
The preservation consultants for the project are Finch and Rose of Beverly, Mass., and the project architects are Clark Green + Bek of Great Barrington, with Structures North Consulting Engineers Inc. of Salem, Mass., serving as the structural engineers and Allegrone Companies of Lenox serving as project contractors.
The church will be holding an open house to celebrate the completion of the project on Saturday, November 2, from 1 to 3 p.m. Congregation members will be giving tours of both the inside and the outside of the manse building at the free event.
While the restoration of the building has been completed, congregation member Roberta Parry said that the building’s interior continues to be a work in progress. Parry said that she, along with other members of the church, continues to search for furniture and other pieces to fit into the period when the manse was built.
Hamilton said that, after all the work, members of the congregation are satisfied with the restoration. “The project is all very well done,” Hamilton said. “We will continue with our ongoing commitment to be good stewards of all of these buildings. In this particular town, we have buildings that are really landmarks. Great Barrington has many 18th- and 19th-century buildings. I think when communities pay attention to the historic nature of their buildings, people have a favorable view of a community. This all contributes to a feeling that people are in a community that really cares about its history.”
