Eliot Hall: National Register of Historic Places Materials
Eliot Hall was built as a public meeting hall ca. 1832. It is a two-story gable front Greek Revival/Italianate frame structure of L-shape plan with corner wood-block quoins, prominent cornice with returns on the gable end, and three-bay street facade. It is located on Eliot Street in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.
Eliot Hall on Eliot Street. Home of the Footlight Club. This photograph was taken on August 8, 1948 by John J. Sheehan. Provided courtesy of Kathy Hourihan.
Since 1878, Eliot Hall, Boston, has been the home of the Footlight Club which has been recognized by the New England Theater Conference as the oldest continuing amateur theatrical organization in the United States. The building is an architecturally notable Greek Revival/Italianate frame meeting hall located near what has been the historic, social, and political center of Jamaica Plain, and has provided a public meeting space for the community since its construction ca. 1832. The building retains integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association, and meets Criteria A and C of the National Register of Historic Places on the local level.
The Reverend John Eliot, Apostle to the Indians, donated a seventy-five acre tract of land to the town of Roxbury in 1689, the income from which was to be used to endow and maintain a public school. In 1821, the Trustees of the Eliot School were empowered by an act of the Massachusetts General Court to sell twenty-one of those acres, in whole or in part; a portion of the land (2 1/4 acres) was sold to the prominent Greenough family in 1822, and they deeded approximately one third of the property to the equally prominent Weld family in 1845. Contemporary maps and deeds indicate that Eliot Hall was built on this property sometime between 1832 and 1845, probably soon after the fourth Eliot School (located nearby at 24 Eliot Street, built in 1832), which it closely resembles. Its Greek Revival/Italianate framing and ornamentation corroborate this estimate. The original purpose and use of Eliot Hall are unknown; however, it is certain that the building was designed to serve a public function (it may have served as a temporary town hall) and was never intended for use as a private residence.
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