High Street, Wayside Teahouse, Belfast, Me. 144c 9-30-22-6x

High Street, Wayside Teahouse, Belfast, Me. 144c 9-30-22-6x

"High Street, Wayside Teahouse, Belfast, Me. 144c 9-30-22-6x" Street Scene, Buildings, High Street, Sign [The Wayside Teahouse ], Church, Bell Tower, Cars On the left just past the apartment house is the First Baptist Church. The Baptist Society had formed in 1809 and built this church on High Street between Miller & Pearl Streets in 1837. The Baptist Society increased in numbers and in prosperity. The necessity of a larger place of worship was felt, and in 1836 measures for building a new meeting-house were undertaken. James McCrillis, Philip Gilkey, and Robert Coombs, a committee appointed to select a site, purchased of James and Samuel B. Miller, for $250, the lot where the church now stands, containing one quarter of an acre. A contract having been made with Calvin Ryder, now an architect in Cambridge, Mass., the frame of the new structure was raised July 17, 1837. On the 17th of November following the bell arrived, and on the 20th of December the house was dedicated. The vestry, in the basement of the church, was not completed until the following year. In April, 1838, the Rev. Sylvanus G. Sargent, a graduate of Waterville College in the class of 1834, accepted a call to become pastor of the society, at a salary of $400, and was publicly ordained June 13, 1838. In 1839, the church voted to accept a constitution for a tem- perance organization, to be called the Baptist Church Temperance Society, and chose Deacon James McCrillis president. Consequent to the contemplated annexation of Texas, the slavery question assumed a prominent subject of discussion in 1845. On the 1st of February of that year, the church passed the following resolution : Resolved, That we, the members of the First Baptist Church in Belfast, deem it inconsistent with our Christian duty to aid in sending slaveholders as religious teachers to enlighten the heathen. The society renovated their church edifice, in 1869-70. The building was raised sufficiently to allow a basement of about twelve feet in height, which contains a large lecture room, also a pastor's room and small vestry. A front projection affords room for the main entrance, from each side of which stairs lead to the auditorium. Upon this projection rests the spire, one hundred and fifty-nine feet high, surmounted by a cross. The auditorium contains seventy-two pews. The front of the building is finished in block-work, and the whole structure is an ornament to the city. The cost of the modification was about $6,000. On October 2, 1872, the bell, was sold and removed. One of larger size and of finer tone is to take its place. The auditorium was not completed until after the other repairs were made, services being held meanwhile in the lecture room. On Tuesday, June 24, 1873, the church was rededicated. The church was damaged by fire in 1944 requiring services to be held in the vestry. One of the largest congregations attended ceremonies when the renovated church was rededicated the following year. A new parsonage was purchased that same year at 27 High Street. A Sunday School building dedicated to its benefactor, Evelyn Frost, was added in 1963, connected by an ell, to the church. On the right can be seen the sign for the "Wayside Tea House" at the corner of Miller & High Streets. The house was built in 1832 by Charles Treadwell. When two gasoline companies took over two historic buildings in order to construct filling stations, it sparked the first zoning ordinance*. One of the houses, the brick tea room was purchased in 1930 by the Texas Company (Texaco) The tea room was rescued by the efforts of one woman, Louise Brewster. After rolling for three weeks down Northport Avenue by a horse-drawn winch, the house is placed in its current location, a mile south of its original location. * It is unclear as to the effectiveness of the zoning ordinances became law in 1934 as 1936 found Belfast counting 28 gasoline filling stations with a total of 61 pumps.