History
The Protestant congregation began 25 years ago as a gathering of the extended St. Louis family in a living room. As Haitian immigrants and native-born Americans swelled its numbers, the church rotated services among members' houses. Soon, prayers and songs in English were added to those in French and Haitian Creole.
In 1990, the congregation bought a building at 76 Harvard St. in North Cambridge. When it outgrew that site, the church held services at the Andrew Peabody School in Cambridge as it hunted for larger quarters. It put in bids for churches in Cambridge and Medford, but fell short. Then came the news that the St. Joseph property in Waltham—church, convent, and a 19th-century house next door—was going up for auction. Once again, New Covenant was outbid, but not entirely out of luck. A subsidiary of a Waltham real estate development firm, Eastport Real Estate Services, bought the property for a condo project, but didn't want to keep the church building. After months of negotiations, New Covenant had a new home—though not without one more hurdle. Before it could move in, the church had to assure Waltham's zoning board that it could provide sufficient parking. After more negotiations, a plan was worked out to add spaces on a grassy lot to the left of the church and behind it on the site of the now-demolished sexton's house. The church has its eye on the former rectory next door for use as a pastor's residence and guesthouse.
Read more about this topic: New Covenant Church Of Cambridge
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more”
—John Adams (1735–1826)