A new future for Lenox’s oldest church

BY CLARENCE FANTO

The Berkshire Eagle

LENOX

— The historic Church on the Hill and Meeting House, an architectural gem and Lenox’s oldest church building, is empty and unused most of the week with the exception of its 11 a.m. Sunday service.

Meanwhile, the town needs affordable and accessible spaces for meetings and events, so the leaders of the congregation are aiming to repurpose the space to host a variety of educational, cultural, non-profit, and community events and gatherings. The goal now is to restore the 1805 building to its original purpose as a more general, multi-use meeting house, said the Rev. Elizabeth Goodman. The congregation itself was organized in 1769.

“It’s not an ‘if you build it, they will come’ situation,” she said. “People are ready to use it, so we have to get it ready.”

A nonprofit will be formed for purposes of fundraising and programming for the meetinghouse, which will remain under church ownership.

Architect Jim Hundt of Foresight Architects in Schenectady, N.Y., a specialist in sacred space and historic restoration, found that “the building is in really good condition and very true to its history,” according to Goodman.

“With some major and less major alterations, it’s poised to be used more than an hour a week. Every time I come up here to sit in this beautiful space and open up the doors, people stop in, saying they’ve never seen the doors open, and they’ve wanted to see what it looks like inside,” Goodman told The Eagle at the church on Monday.

Many visitors to the town-owned cemetery adjoining the church at 169 Main St. are keen to peek into the building, the congregation’s treasurer David Dyer pointed out.

Affordable venues in Lenox are in short supply, Planning Committee member Peter Metz said. The Lenox Community Center is unable to fulfill all of its requests for space, he said.

Metz noted that the Church on the Hill has “superb acoustics.”

“So the idea of making this space a community resource as it was when it was first built reflects the historic legacy as well as the current need,” he said.

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