Cousins Island Chapel

Cousins Island Chapel
Location E side of Cousins Rd., 1.9 mi. SE of jct. with Morton Rd., Cousins Island, Maine
Coordinates 43°45′39″N 70°8′30″W / 43.76083°N 70.14167°W / 43.76083; -70.14167Coordinates: 43°45′39″N 70°8′30″W / 43.76083°N 70.14167°W / 43.76083; -70.14167
Area less than one acre
Built 1894
Architectural style Gothic, Shingle Style
NRHP Reference # 97000605[1]
Added to NRHP June 20, 1997

Cousins Island Chapel is an historic non-denominational chapel on Cousins Road on Cousins Island, an island Casco Bay off the coast of Yarmouth, Maine. Built in 1894 by local year-round residents, it is the most architecturally notable building on the island, and is representative of a late 19th-century trend of building summer chapels in coastal Maine. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.[1]

Description and history

Cousins Island Chapel in December 2015

Cousins Island is a roughly oblong island located just off the coast of Yarmouth, Maine, to which municipality it belongs. It is joined to the mainland by a causeway, and is connected via a second causeway to the small Littlejohn Island to its east. The Cousins Island Chapel is located near the center of Cousins Island, on the east side of the main road (Cousins Road), just north of its junction with the road leading to Littlejohn Island. The chapel is a modest single-story wood frame structure, with a steeply pitched gable roof, and an exterior finished in a combination of wooden shingles and board-and-batten siding. It is oriented with its long axis parallel to the road, with a band of sash windows offset to the left of center on the street-facing facade, and a hip-roofed entrance porch to the right. The gable ends have lancet-arched windows, some with stained glass, with board-and-batten siding in the gables. There are decorative sawn brackets at the lower edge of the roof where it flare out slightly.[2]

The chapel was built in 1894-95 by volunteer labor organized by the Yarmouth First Baptist Church, to provide a place of worship for the residents of Cousins and Littlejohn Islands. Although most of the services held there were Baptist, the building was open to all denominations. It was used regularly for services until World War II, and is now maintained by a local nonprofit group that organizes periodic summer services. The chapel is one of a series of architecturally distinctive coastal chapels built in Maine during the late 19th century, although it is distinguished from the others in that it was built for year-round residents, rather than for summer visitors.[2]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 National Park Service (2009-03-13). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. 1 2 "NRHP nomination for Cousins Island Chapel" (PDF). National Park Service. Retrieved 2015-10-26.
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