William Morgan: Where obscurity may have helped save some of a town’s beauty

Photos by William Morgan

The signpost on the green in Rochester, Mass., tells you how far you are from various Bay State towns. The attractive, old-fashioned marker also hints that this place is the back of beyond — the middle of nowhere. 

Rochester wasn’t always a place forgotten. First settled in 1679, it was a major shipbuilding town, at least until what became Marion and Mattapoisett broke away and Rochester became landlocked.

There are a few handsome Federal period houses dotted about the countryside, no doubt remnants of maritime wealth before New England commerce was strangled by Jefferson’s Embargo Act of 1807.

Rochester’s town common boasts a marvelous Carpenter’s Gothic church. The church’s foundation goes back to 1703, but this confection dates to the middle of the 19th Century.  The First Congregational Church’s medievalism is a riff on the typical New England Meeting House: a simple preaching box with a battlemented tower instead of a multi-tiered Georgian steeple.

There are no great masonry walls or expanses of stained glass. The meeting house windows have pointed tops, the tower base has louvered openings in the shape of quatrefoils, and the corners of the parapets have spikey caps

The delightful First Congo is not going to make up for the loss of access to Buzzards Bay. But the town’s very misfortune may have preserved this treasure.

William Morgan is a Providence-based architectural critic and historian and photographer. He is the author of American Country Churches and The Cape Cod Cottage, among other books.

Poor Rochester (in red) — so near Buzzards Bay but cut off. Orange is Plymouth County.