Word: swedenborg
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...underdog of a quite different sort here in Cambridge surprisingly won a round in its bracket this week, defeating a more powerful and bigger opponent. The Swedenborg Chapel was named an historical landmark by the City Council on Tuesday night, thereby protecting it from a Somerville developer's plan to demolish the building and raise a housing development in its place. The Council's decision preserves the outside of the Chapel from being destroyed or blocked from view. The inside is not protected because the Historical Commission does not consider interiors for landmark designation (though the council has requested...
...support at the council meeting, a representative from Harvard's community relations department spoke on behalf of the chapel's protection. I say unusual both because Harvard has always been hesitant to limit its own expansion options and because it was about this same time last year that Swedenborg parishioners were fighting the construction of the Knafel Center, which is to house Harvard's Center for International Studies (HCIS) and other programs...
...current situation is a little more complicated: the chapel has been put on sale because of the poor financial situation of its owner, the Swedenborg School of Religion in Newton. But the congregation has the right of first refusal (that is, they have the chance to counter any offer put on the table), and Harvard has the second right of first refusal. Now that the exterior of the chapel has been preserved, it is unlikely that any major destruction will befall the building, but the congregation rightly wants it to remain as a place of worship...
...Frank Fodera, who made a $2.7 million offer to the Swedenborg School of Religion to buy the chapel in February, reportedly planned to raze the bulk of the chapel and build a housing development...
...This is not the last of the threats to the Swedenborg however. The historical landmark designation does not, for instance, protect the interior of the church...