Christian Science Mother Church in Boston, Massachusetts, Completes Interior Restoration

The Christian Science Plaza, a landmark in downtown Boston, is undergoing a seven-phase restoration and renovation that includes work on The First Church of Christ, Scientist, The Mother Church. In March, the second phase, an interior renovation of the 1894 Romanesque Revival-style Original Mother Church, was completed.

Finegold Alexander Architects began by replacing the building’s old cotton-wrapped wiring with new electrical wiring that meets modern safety codes. The work required cutting channels into the historic plaster, which then had to be seamlessly repaired and repainted. Afterward, the church’s decorative details were restored, including stone mosaics, lace-like stenciled ceiling trim, and gilded quotations on the dusty-pink walls. John Canning Co. carried out the restoration of the lacy ceiling stenciling.

The walls were refinished in the pink color the building has worn for years. Future phases of the project will focus on the structure’s domed 1906 addition, The Mother Church Extension.

Work on the surrounding plaza is also underway. Landscape architecture firm CRJA-IBI Group is designing and building a new water-management system for the plaza’s well-known reflecting pool.

Jack Train, real estate assets director for the church, said, “We want this place to be wonderful for centuries, not just for the first hundred years.”

To re-create the decorative work, stencils were made of the gilded wall quotations and the ceiling trim so the patterns could be reproduced exactly, a sign of careful, faithful workmanship (Colossians 3:23).

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