Church of Messiah (Mss. Gr. 196)

Historical Information

The Church of the Messiah was located in the Olneyville section of Providence, Rhode Island. In the mid-nineteenth century, Olneyville became a center for textile manufacturing. The Church of the Messiah was founded in 1855 to serve the growing community of Episcopalian textile workers. The original wooden church building was erected at the corner of the Valley and High Streets (now Westminster Street), and the first services were held there in October 1855.

In 1888, Elizabeth Amory Gammell donated a substantial sum to the Church of the Messiah for the purpose of replacing the wooden church building with a more permanent stone structure. This new building was named the Arthur Amory Gammell Memorial Church in honor of Mrs. Gammell's son, who died of pneumonia in 1887 at the age of 25. The new church was completed in 1890.

Over the course of the next decade, the church membership grew rapidly, becoming one of the largest parishes in the Rhode Island Diocese, with the Sunday School alone boasting nearly 2,500 members in 1900.

In order to accommodate the growing number of members, a parish house was built on an adjacent property in 1913. In 1924, the roof beam of the parish house was dedicated as a memorial to the church members who had fought in World War I.

On Sunday, December 11, 1927, parishioners arrived to find their church on fire. The fire heavily damaged the interior of the church, destroying the organ and all but two stained glass windows. Services were held in the parish house for the next ten months while the church was rebuilt.

In the 1930s the church successfully repaid the debt incurred from rebuilding and weathered the Great Depression. During World War II, the church became a center for war work. Following World War II, however, the parish found itself facing an entirely new challenge as the textile manufacturing industry moved south and many of the more wealthy residents of the neighborhoods moved to the suburbs. Though jewelry manufacturing operations soon moved into the vacated textile factories, the new industry employed a much more poorly-paid workforce. As a result of this change, the church membership dropped by 30% in the 1950s, and the neighborhood began to decline. In order to remain a relevant institution in the area, the church began performing more community outreach, starting an active Youth Group, forming baseball and basketball teams, and holding church bazaars. In honor of the church's centennial in 1956, new stained glass windows were installed to replace the plain glass windows that had been installed following the 1927 fire.

Membership in the church continued to decline throughout the 1950s. By 1960, half of the former members of the church no longer lived in Olneyville. In response, the church continued to increase its neighborhood outreach, canvassing the new public housing projects for members and sponsoring services at Hartford Park Chapel. Despite these efforts, however, the church reached a low point of 485 members in the mid-1970s.

The Reverend Walter Simmons revitalized the church during his tenure, which began in 1981. He continued the growth of outreach projects, starting a neighborhood soup kitchen and emergency food closet, as well as a very successful free day camp for low-income children. These new projects gave the church the boost it needed, and the membership ballooned and the Sunday School was once again one of the largest in the Diocese.

In the 1990s, the church continued to emphasize neighborhood involvement, hiring the resident organist to do double duty as the Outreach Coordinator. The church became an active member of the Rhode Island Organizing Project (RIOP), a non-profit organization focused on creating affordable housing for decaying neighborhoods. Also, the church became involved in two local centers (the Nickerson House and the Joslin Center) which offered a variety of programs for little or no cost to low-income families in Olneyville. The church additionally lent worship space to a local Spanish language church, Vision Evangelica.

While these outreach efforts were very successful, both the membership and the fiscal health of the church declined sharply in the 1990s and by 2001 the church was again struggling to keep its doors open. In August 2001, the Church of the Messiah joined with other Providence churches, St. Peter's and St. Andrew's in the "Open Door Regional Ministry." Under this agreement, the churches continued to operate and maintain their original buildings and grounds but shared their financial resources, clergy, and office staff. The solution was only temporary and the dwindling endowment and membership, high cost of gas, and the necessity to bring the building up to a new fire code forced the Church of the Messiah to merge with Grace Church on June 4, 2006.