St. Margaret’s Church

The tower of St. Margaret’s Church caught our attention as we walked through Old Orchard Beach. Its rounded shape, shingled walls, and small cupola give the building a character unlike the storefronts around it. The church stands at the corner of Old Orchard Street and Saco Avenue, on a route that has carried generations of visitors toward the shore.

St. Margaret’s began as a summer chapel. By the late nineteenth century, trainloads of vacationers were coming to Old Orchard Beach, and Catholics staying in town had difficulty traveling to Mass in Biddeford. Father T. P. Linehan of St. Mary’s Parish purchased this corner lot and built a chapel that opened for the summer of 1895. It seated 250 people and was named for St. Margaret of Scotland.

As the resort grew, the chapel grew with it. In 1915, builders cut the structure in half, moved the sanctuary back, and inserted a new section between the two parts, more than doubling its seating. The change answered a practical need while preserving the church at the heart of a busy summer town. 

St. Margaret’s gradually became a place for residents in every season. Heat was installed and year-round Masses began in 1924. For years, parishioners put up a partition each winter so they could warm and use the front portion of the church. In 1926, St. Margaret’s became its own parish, with twenty registered families and Father James Mullen as its first pastor. By the middle of the century, its congregation had grown so much that summer Masses were also held in other buildings around town.

That history gives the church a place in Old Orchard Beach’s larger story. It was built for people who came for a week by the sea, then adapted as the year-round community grew. Still standing near the road to the beach, St. Margaret’s carries both histories in its walls.