Winter Street Church
Across from Bath’s Library Park, the white tower of Winter Street Church rises above Washington Street. Pointed windows and slender spires give the building its Gothic character, while its wooden construction places that design firmly in the New England town around it. The church was built in 1843 by Anthony Coombs Raymond, a master builder from nearby Brunswick. It is recognized as one of the finest surviving examples of wooden Gothic Revival church architecture in New England.
For more than a century, it was the Winter Street Congregational Church. By 1971, the building faced demolition. Bath residents responded by forming Sagadahoc Preservation, Inc. to save it. Their effort preserved the church and began an organization that would continue working to protect historic buildings throughout the area
Now known as the Winter Street Center, the building has a new public life. Its hall is used for gatherings and events, and preservation work continues. The pointed windows and tall steeple still express the purpose for which it was built, while the activity inside reflects the decision Bath made to keep using a place it valued.
Winter Street Church tells two chapters of Bath’s history at once: the ambition of a growing nineteenth-century city and the determination of a later generation to care for what it inherited. Its survival was a choice, made by people who saw that an old building could still have a place in the life of their community.
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