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Chapel Saint Paul's Church and Parish House
- Address: 15 and 27 Saint Paul St and 104 Aspinwall Ave
St Paul's Church is the oldest religious structure in Brookline, having been built when only three other churches existed (Harvard Congregational, First Parish, and Baptist, all since demolished) and when Brookline's population of 2500 lived among scattered residences and market gardens. It has been the parish of such established and distinguished families as the Aspinwalls, Littels, former president of Harvard University Augustus Lowell and his sister Amy; Henry Chase, Desmond Fitzgerald, and J. Lovell Little and it is the only ecclesiastical work of Richard Upjohn in Brookline. The history of its buildings reflect the social, economic, and liturgical changes of the times and the ability of the congregation to respond to them.
St Paul's Church was designed by Richard Upjohn in the Gothic style. It has been called one of the earliest and perhaps the most important of the first generation of picturesque village churches in the Boston area (Tucci). Its asymmetrical arrangement with the tower on the northwest side and the entrance on the south is typical-of the ecclesiological movement in the Episcopal Church of which Upjohn was a leading proponent. This revivalist movement emphasized functional rather than artistic principle in architecture and supported the idea of purifying the Church by restoring its medieval traditions. Constructed of Roxbury puddingstone laid in blocks of irregular shape and size the building features such Gothic elements as tripartite arches, trefoil windows, stone tracery, and steeply pitched roof. - US NRHP