Gather Together
Help Us To Preserve
The St. John’s community is coming together to ensure that our beautiful and historic church remains a vibrant and welcoming space for worship, music, theater, childcare, and gathering together in all our varied and diverse community groups. We need your help!
St. John’s is a historic landmark:
Located in historic Sumner Hill in Jamaica Plain, St. John’s Episcopal Church has played a vital role in its community and in greater Boston since it was built in 1882.
Our Gothic Revival church, designed by local architect Harris M. Stephenson (1845-1909), is both a beautiful building and a place for community gatherings.
St. John’s is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Sumner Hill Historic District and has a Preservation Restriction held by the Massachusetts Historical Commission.
St. John’s Capital Campaign:
We have launched a Capital Campaign to fund our preservation and restoration work and we aim to raise a minimum of $600,000.
Over the past two years, we raised $239,000 from grant funding through the City of Boston’s Community Preservation Act Fund, the Massachusetts Historical Commission, and the Henderson Foundation.
The parish has contributed significant funds through a combination of appreciation from St. John’s small endowment and a loan from the Episcopal Dioceses of Massachusetts for this important work.
We now turn our efforts to raising funds from parishioners, friends of the parish, those who use our building and the broader community with a goal of raising an additional $180,000.
Restoration work has already begun:
We have nearly completed our most urgent priority - repairing leaks in the tower and spire, and making repairs to a portion of the southern (Roanoke Street) wall and window opening for the Proctor Memorial window.
Our restoration work will include making our sanctuary a more welcoming and comfortable space for all who enter, whether for a church service, a concert, a theatrical production, or a community meeting, including:
The re-installation of the George B. Proctor Memorial Window in March 2023;
The repair of the aging tower door on Roanoke Street, to ensure that the entrance to our sanctuary is truly welcoming to all who wish to enter; and
Long-awaited improvements to the church interior, such as plastering, painting, seating and flooring repairs (among others!)
Beginning in the middle of 2023, St. John’s will engage in an Appreciative Inquiry process, to develop a vision for the use of the building in generations to come, and to ensure that our work to restore the sanctuary and other areas of the building is in keeping with that vision.