Eliot Congregationalist Church

Eliot Congregational Church is located in Roxbury at the intersection of Walnut Avenue and Dale Street. The Victorian Gothic church was built in 1873. A distinctive feature of the interior decoration of the temple are the beautiful colored stained glass windows produced by Louis Tiffany, which were installed in 1905. In 1994, the church was included in the National Register of Historic Places.

One of the first European settlements to emerge in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the mid-seventeenth century was Roxbury. This settlement was recognized as a city in 1848, and in 1868 it was annexed to Boston and became a suburban area. By the middle of the XIX century, a tram line was established connecting Roxbury with the center of Boston and the area began to be intensively built up with residential buildings and temples. At this time, three parishes of the Congregational Church arose one by one in Roxbury.

Congregationalist communities arose in England in the late seventeenth century. Many members of these communities went to North America and settled in New England around Massachusetts Bay. Congregationalists advocated the independence of each community from secular or ecclesiastical authorities and believed that each church community should be completely independent.