Places that elicit contemplation, reflection and inspiration.
Founded in 2009, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center is a mosque and community center located in the heart of Roxbury. Drawing over 1,500 worshipers from over 64 ethnicities for its Friday prayer services, the ISBCC’s mission is to teach and to live Islam in America. Under the leadership of its senior Imam, all of the mosque’s programming is executed through the prism of the “Four Prophetic Spheres” of Knowledge, Lived Spirituality, Community, and Service.
Completed in 1813 under the leadership of local craftsman William Rhodes, the Federal style Round Church is a sixteen-sided meetinghouse that was built to serve the community as a meeting place and a church for the area’s five Protestant congregations. Nevertheless, shortly after the building was constructed, several of the individual congregations built their own churches and the structure reverted to the Town of Richmond to become exclusively a meetinghouse beginning in 1880. In 1973, the Round Church closed due to safety concerns. As a result, the Richmond Historical Society was formed and with the generosity of the community’s time and money as well as its ability to secure grants, the Round Church remains today—serving as a testament to the now rare traditional New England sixteen-sided meetinghouse.
Dedicated to self-improvement, the camp meeting movement in the late nineteenth century gave rise to hundreds of buildings for multipurpose community assembly throughout the United States. However, few survive today. The Temple, originally known as “Way of Truth Temple” was built in 1881 to be used for an array of religious, cultural and educational programs in Ocean Park. Its unusual octagonal design was typical of the time and common for “Chautauqua” sites. The natural wood post and beam interior structure harnesses its visitors underneath its umbrella, solidifying a sense of community, nature and peace of mind.