Standing on Cypress St. looking northeast at the Bethany Building. Washington St. crosses from left to right. Foreground, right: one-story store fronts at 4 Cypress Ave., still standing. Background, right: 115 School St., no longer standing.

Known as the “Bethany Building”, the church was constructed in 1844 as the first church in Brookline of the newly-organized Harvard Congregational Society. The building was sold in 1873 as the Society prepared to move to a larger structure at the corner of Harvard St. and Marion St. After a brief stint as a Methodist church followed by several additional changes of ownership, the building was acquired in 1887 by the Bethany Sunday School Association which held it for the next twenty years. The building was torn down in 1928.

[Courtesy of the National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site]