49 Franklin Street | 1935 | Richard Shaw
Moderne Catholic chapel with single recessed arched entry and double-leaved center doors, with five 4-story vertical window bays. Note cable fluting along topmost spandrel. Art Deco and Gothic features combine in the facade and largely intact interior. Shaw, architect for the Art Deco Hatch Shell on Boston's Esplanade, designed many churches in the Boston area, but this was his only church in Moderne style. Once again, Boston's Bullfinch is inescapable: the church stands on the sight of his Tontine Crescent of 1793, designed by Bullfinch, which was torn down in the 1850s and replaced with the first generation of commercial buildings.
