Seacoast Blog #38
March 18, 2009

I have in my basement a wooden reproduction of the South Church on State Street in Portsmouth. I bought the doll-house size model from the man who made it maybe 25 years ago when I was living downtown. The flat roof outside my third floor apartment looked down into the gigantic windows of the Unitarian Church. I paid $100 for it back then. Now it needs a good home. Maybe yours? (Continued below)

The story of Portsmouth’s South Church

It is a magnificent building, but I just can’t keep it. The original is cool too. The Hulk-like granite structure seems to have been transported here from ancient Greece. The huge Doric columns on the portico look like the kind that Sampson would topple in an early black and white film. Jonathan Folsom, the local architect and builder, also designed the giant wooden shiphouse at the Navy Yard and the massive stone breakwater at the Isles of Shoals.

It’s a beautifully proportioned building, which is probably why I bought the dollhouse version when I moved from downtown Portsmouth. I missed looking at it and wanted my own church. 

But the dark granite edifice Is strange because I think of the Unitarians as anything but heavy handed and formal. If someone told me there was a new gay, black, female minister in town, this is where I would look for her first. South Church is where I expect to find nonviolent peace rallies, folk concerts, revisionist history tours and progressive political debates.

So why the long face? How come South Church has such a grave exterior? And why is the South Church just two blocks away from the North Church, when the Portsmouth South End is down by the waterfront?

I’m no theologian, but this is what I’ve been able to cobble together. A great religious "schism" split what was a largely Puritan Portsmouth in 1713. There was "great disorder and tumult" according to early records, about building a new Congregational church in the north end of town near the current Market Square. The old church and the major population was then in the South End on the waterfront. So the town divided into two parishes and the South-Enders eventually built a new church on Meetinghouse Hill. A popular minister, Rev. Samuel Haven, preached "a softer version" of the fairly strict Calvinist teaching of the North Church downtown. But after his death in 1806 the parish dwindled in size.

A whole new Congregationalist sect called Universalists arrived in Portsmouth just after the Revolution in 1777 and built a beautiful wooden church on Pleasant Street in 1808 above the present day parking lot across from the John Langdon mansion. Then in 1819 Rev. Nathan Parker introduced the Unitarian belief to members of the South Parish. The two beliefs had a lot in common, but were not identical. Both did reject a number of Puritan notions about "predestination" and who was going to Hell and who could avoid it. Both eventually viewed Jesus as a mortal role model, rather than a divine being and saw the Bible as a powerful spiritual tool rather than the infallible word of God.

For his new radical beliefs, Dr. Parker was excommunicated from the Congregationalist Church, but many of his parishioners followed him into the new religion. So in 1824 the Unitarians began building a monumental Greek-revival structure out of granite in what was now the new center of town. After three devastating fires, nobody was using wood. The nearby Universalist Church on Pleasant Street (can you keep the two separate in your mind? I can’t.) burned in 1896. This group built a brick church that was destroyed by fire soon after World War II. The two churches beginning with the letter "U" had been friendly, and now they merged into the Universalist Unitarians or "UUs".

So that’s how the South Parish moved downtown right next to the North Parish. And if you go inside the South Church you’ll find it appears amazingly airy and weightless despite the exterior made of hammered Rockport granite. The early Unitarians did not want the minister elevated in a pulpit high above the parishioners and removed the side balconies to keep everyone level. The architecture, like the Unitarians, seemed to reject the Puritan idea that one person could be more holy than another.

Here’s what the Portsmouth Journal had to say when the building was completed on February 18, 1826 -- "no representation either in words or figures can convey to the mind a just idea of the beautiful proportions and finished workmanship of this superb edifice…its exterior has the appearance of united grandeur and simplicity; its only defect is the tower or belfry, which was added in obedience to popular prejudice, and which alone prevents us from calling this church a perfect model of classic architecture."

The belfry of my church model has come unglued, which is its only real defect. I’m too lazy to sell the thing on eBay, box it up, and ship it out. I’d prefer it finds a loving home. Perhaps it should go to the church itself? All suggestions gratefully accepted.  

Copyright © 2009 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.