BATH

Historian Earle Shuttleworth displayed and described the city’s churches and public buildings during a forum Wednesday at Winter Street Center.

From the meetinghouse style of the 18th-century churches to the Italianate structures designed by Francis Fassett and more, Shuttleworth described them all.

“It really is a remarkable collection of structures,” he said.

The Old South Church, Union Church, Old North Church and Winter Street Church dotted Bath’s horizon in 1845. The first meetinghouse, built in Arrowsic in 1758, was a classic example of that great open inside space, Shuttleworth pointed out.

He said many of the city’s early churches were moved to other locations, or burned.

The 1854 burning of the first Catholic church was a sad chapter in the city’s history. The newly-arrived European immigrants had moved into the Old South Meeting House, built in 1805 and vacated in 1847. The audience viewed a painting of people watching as flames engulfed the church.

The fire had been set.

“It was one of the most dramatic political events in Maine history,” Shuttleworth said. “A year later, people reached out and a new Catholic church was built.”

The audience then saw the New Jerusalem building, built in 1843 at the intersections of Winter, Middle and High streets, built by Alden Farnham.

“It was the purest example of Greek Revival in Maine,” Shuttleworth said. “It has a beautiful Doric column façade.”

The building caved in beneath ice and snow in 1920, but was rebuilt by John Calvin Stevens of Portland.

Shuttleworth presented a slide of the Winter Street Center, built in 1843. The former Congregational Church closed, but has been owned and maintained since 1971 by Sagadahoc Preservation Inc., which sponsored Wednesday’s event.

The Central Church, now known as the Chocolate Church, was more a model of English Medieval architecture, Shuttleworth said. Sagadahoc Preservation, he noted, also came to that church’s rescue, and it’s now a center for performing arts.

He said any discussion of Bath’s public buildings must include City Hall, which started out as a simple Greek Revival structure in 1838, and was replaced as the Davenport Memorial Building in 1928.