Driving around I always see this magnificent church. One day I decided to stop and get a good look at these ornate designs. Stone carved faces peek out at you around every corner.and you really do feel like you are transported into another time. Check out the intricate carving out of bronze as well. There is always something to see and a story to be told... Happy Exploring 🍃 The Unitarian Memorial Church in Fairhaven Massachusetts was built, financed and donated to the Unitarians in 1904 by Henry H. Rogers in memory of his mother, Mary Eldredge Huttleston. The church was designed by Boston architect Charles Brigham in a Gothic Revival style. It is one hundred fourteen feet in height, one hundred feet long in body and fifty-three feet wide. The nave is thirty-two feet wide and seventy-one feet long. The main aisle is sixty-two feet long and six feet wide. The church, parish house and former parsonage (now Harrop Center) of the Unitarian Society are so placed as to form three sides of a quadrangle, set among well-kept lawns and shrubbery. Granite (locally quarried) with Indiana limestone form decorative carvings which dominate the exterior while marble and limestone carvings dominate the interior. All stonework artistry was created by forty-five Italian craftsmen brought in to Fairhaven. At the south entrance to the sanctuary are the great bronze doors, extremely rich in design, each leaf is solid bronze weighing 2 1/4 tons. Following the Gothic outline of each leaf is a series of niches. Those on the exterior are canopied, each containing a finely modeled figure nine inches high. The thirty-eight statues represent great characters in the history of Christianity, covering a period of nineteen centuries. The stained glass windows are the work of American Impressionist artist, Robert Reid. They cover the theme of the birth of Jesus in the Memorial Window utilizing color and shading from cool blues to warm earth tones through the nine clerestory windows from East to West. Seven of these windows are titled with one of the Beatitudes (or Blessed Be's) which Jesus was teaching his Disciples as illuminated in the glorious twenty-four foot high Sermon on the Mount window located on the west wall. One notable effect of the windows is the natural flesh quality in the figures. Two years were spent in their design and execution. These stained glass windows were Reid's most prized work, a masterpiece set and his only effort in stained glass.

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