Temple Emmanuel’s building at Tudor Street and Cary Avenue, which has stood since 1859 and served three congregations, will be protected by a permanent historic preservation restriction held by the City of Chelsea. The City Council authorized City Manager Fidel Maltez to sign the agreement on October 5, by a 7-0 roll call vote with four councillors absent.
The restriction covers the outside of the building. It requires that the building’s historic features be kept “substantially in their current condition or better,” and limits demolition, additions and other exterior changes. It does not transfer ownership to the city or make the city responsible for upkeep, and Maltez wrote that it costs the city nothing. The agreement still needs the approval of the Massachusetts Historical Commission.
The point is money for repairs. The restriction “will allow Temple Emmanuel to pursue grant funding, including potential funding through the Massachusetts Historical Commission,” Maltez wrote to the council. The agreement says the temple intends to strip the synthetic siding off the building and restore the wood underneath, if grants cover the cost.
A Baptist chapel, a Methodist church, then a synagogue
According to the agreement, the building has three parts:
- A chapel built around 1859 to 1860, with a central rose window on the Tudor Street side.
- A larger sanctuary built in 1872, with its main entrance on Cary Avenue and stained glass in its round-arched windows. Its three-story tower lost its steeple in 1937.
- A one-story connector, also from 1872.
The Second Baptist Church of Chelsea, founded in 1859 and later named the Cary Avenue Baptist Church, built it. The First Methodist Episcopal Church bought it in 1904 and stayed until 1937, when Congregation Emmanuel, now Temple Emmanuel of Chelsea, acquired it.
The Methodists had moved there from Walnut Street, where they had worshipped since 1858, according to our history archive’s page on the First Methodist Episcopal Church. Temple Emmanuel itself was organized at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in June 1937, as the successor to Temple Beth El, which was dedicated in 1929 and lasted only a few years, according to the archive’s history of Chelsea’s synagogues. It opened on Cary Avenue that fall. Of the roughly 20 synagogues Chelsea has had, Temple Emmanuel and Temple Beth El were the only ones that were not Orthodox, the archive says. In the 1930s, about 20,000 of the city’s nearly 46,000 residents were Jewish.
The agreement calls it “a rare and unusual survivor of the late nineteenth-century civic buildings in Chelsea.” The sanctuary keeps most of its original woodwork inside, but the outside has been covered twice: in asbestos siding in the 1940s and in aluminum siding in 1963 and 1964, which covered or removed much of the original wood trim. The slate roofs were restored, the chimneys repaired and a new roof drainage system installed in 2023. A lot at the corner of Cary Avenue and Gardner Street holds two stone tablets and a flagpole that serve as memorials to Jewish soldiers.
The restriction applies in perpetuity. The temple can change the interior freely as long as the exterior is not affected, and a clause says nothing in the agreement limits the congregation’s right to use and maintain the building “in keeping with its religious principles, practices or beliefs.” The agreement is to be signed for the congregation by Sara Lee Callahan, chair of the temple’s board of directors.
What councillors said
Councillor Lisa Santagate noted that the temple houses a Jewish museum and was the site of the pilot for the city’s micro food pantries. “I have long been an advocate for historical preservation” in Chelsea, said Councillor Todd Taylor, who pointed to the city’s 400th anniversary. Councillor Calvin Brown thanked members of the congregation who attended, and Councillor Manuel Teshe thanked the city manager for working to preserve “such an important building.”
Read the council’s discussion in the transcript of the October 5 meeting.
Photo: Chelsea City Hall, where the council voted October 5. Daderot, Wikimedia Commons, CC0.