Calvary Church

Just over 100 years old, the Calvary Methodist Church in Arlington, Mass., is crowned with an octagonal belfry created in 1809 by architect Charles Bulfinch.

The belfry originally topped Boylston Market, but was taken down in 1887 and sold to the Bunker Hill Brewery.

The onset of Prohibition in 1920 meant that the brewery faced demolition in 1921, at which time, the belfry was salvaged and given to the church.

Besides this traveling belfry, Bulfinch, who worked in Boston and Washington D.C., designed boatload of prominent buildings. Among them, the Massachusetts State House (1798), the Old Connecticut State House (1796), and Boston’s Faneuil Hall (1806), one of the top tourist spots in the United States.

Designed by James McNaughton and William Perry in 1919, the church itself is almost an exact replica of King’s Chapel in Boston, except made of wood.

The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

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