Historical photos of the Pownal Center Community Church
Did you know our Church building is over 170 years old? The Community Church building (aka the Union Church) was erected in 1849.
In 1905, Ward E. Niles deeded nearby land to the church. The church then built the Carriage Barn on that land, giving worshippers a place to shelter their horses and carriages during services. Today the carriage barn continues to serve the community as a gathering space for social events and fundraisers put on by the church.
Church History
History of the Pownal Center Community Church
The Pownal Center Community Church is the oldest church in the Town of Pownal, Vermont. The building standing today at 495 Center Street was constructed in 1849 and has served the community continuously for over 175 years. Its roots, however, reach back to the very founding of the town.
The Founding: 1790
When the Town of Pownal received its charter from Governor Benning Wentworth in 1761, parcels of land were set aside for specific public purposes. Rather than selling these parcels outright, the town leased them out for very long terms, often 999 years, with the annual rent going to support whatever purpose the land was designated for. Many of these parcels were designated as school land, leased out over generations with the rent collected going directly to fund the local school system. The Pownal Center Community Church sits on one of these school land parcels.
In November of 1789, the town held a meeting and voted explicitly not to build a meetinghouse using public funds. The building of a house of worship, they resolved, would be left to those who wished to undertake it themselves, on their own initiative and at their own expense.
That initiative came quickly. In January of 1790, a group of citizens organized to build a house of worship at Pownal Center. On January 13, the Baptist Church in Pownal drafted a set of proposals to govern the new building. Six days later, on January 19, the town leased the two-acre lot where the church sits today for 994 years, with the annual rent supporting the local school system as the original charter intended. The lease was granted to private citizens organizing on their own initiative, not to any town body, and construction began shortly after.
The first meetinghouse (old name for church) was a modest log structure, roughly 15 feet wide and 20 feet long, with a raised platform at the southeast corner for the pulpit. As the community grew, the building was enlarged, though builders discovered a solid rock ledge beneath the site that limited how much they could expand at ground level. That rock ledge would shape the building’s future in ways the original founders could not have anticipated.
The Rebuilding: 1849
By the late 1840s, the original log meetinghouse had served the community for nearly sixty years and a larger space was needed. In June of 1849, citizens of Pownal began subscribing funds to “repair the old Church or Meeting house at Pownal center or build a new one.” The effort was community-wide. Whether or not a family belonged to any church, the head of every household was approached to contribute what they could: money, materials, or labor.
One farmer and his sons from the west side of town cut the logs from their woodlot and hauled them six miles to the Bushnell and Barber sawmill at the outlet of Perch Pond, which would later come to be known as Barber Pond. Carpenters, masons, and citizens of every trade volunteered their time. Some days dozens of men appeared for work; on other days only a handful. The builders, Niles and Myers, were contracted and the old log church was given to them by the church as part of the payment, its hand-hewn timbers still holding value after six decades of service.
Rather than fighting the rock ledge that had always sat beneath the site, the builders made it their foundation. The upper story of the new building was constructed larger than the basement below, rising above the rock rather than into it. The result is visible in the building’s proportions to this day. It is, in the most literal sense, a church built upon a rock. As Luke 6:48 reads: “He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.”
The church and the townspeople raised over $1,300 through private donations: the money, labor, and materials that built the structure standing today. The town of Pownal made no contribution to the building itself. The church offered the town use of the basement for public meetings and elections, on the condition that the town pay to fit the space out at its own expense. The town accepted that offer, contributed $400 to finish the basement area.
The Union House: 1850
On February 23, 1850, the church and donors gathered and voted that the new building would be “called and known as a Union house” and that it “shall not be dedicated for the Exclusive benefit of any one Christian denomination.”
The arrangement held. By 1868, three denominations shared the church. The Baptists held services in the forenoon, the Methodists worshipped in the afternoon, and the Advent Christian fellowship met in the evening.
Stewardship Through the Generations: 1893–1948
In August of 1893, a meeting was called to undertake repairs to “the Union Church at said place.” The assembled citizens explicitly referenced the 1850 governance rules by page number in the town records, demonstrating a clear awareness of the building’s history and the framework under which it operated.
In 1915, the Ladies Aid Society of the Methodist group led a renovation of the interior. Walls and ceiling were repapered, the woodwork was repainted, and the worn red carpet that had covered the platform and aisles was replaced with green wool carpeting. A new organ was purchased in 1914.
Around 1917, the town moved its regular meetings out of the church basement to a new building nearby. The town continued to use the church basement for voting on election days, rent free until 1991, when the town, needing more space, moved voting into the nearby fire department building.
In January of 1948, over thirty members of the community gathered at a supper in the church basement to formally organize under a new name. A record captures the moment: “This is to be a record of the old Union Church of Pownal Center, now, and recently, known as the Community Church.”
The new name, The Community Church of Pownal Center, reflected the same inclusive tradition that had governed the building since 1790; open to regular and affliated members, members from other churches, and community participants alike. Among those present were descendants of the families who had built and maintained the church across the generations, including members of the Niles, Andrews, Sweet, and Towslee families.
At that same meeting, Daniel Mason presented a gift on behalf of his family in memory of his grandfather, Daniel A. Dean, the same Daniel A. Dean who had served on the Union Church governing committee in 1893. The Dean family’s connection to the church did not end there. In 1953, Harold Dean donated a replacement bell for the bell tower, one with its own remarkable history: it had been presented to Stratton Mountain by Daniel Webster, United States Secretary of State, in 1840.
The Church Today
The Pownal Center Community Church has stood at the heart of this community since 1790. The building constructed in 1849 remains strong and solid to this day, and the story of its timbers connects it directly to the very beginning; An architect examining the building has noted beams that are significantly older than the 1849 construction, believed to have been from the original 1790 church and built into the new structure when it was raised. The building standing today is, in a very real sense, the same church the founders built.
The church gained national recognition when a photograph of the Pownal Center village, taken by Gustav Anderson in 1940, was used in Samuel Chamberlain’s celebrated 1942 volume of photographs, Fair Is Our Land. The image appeared on the book’s jacket and was subsequently featured on calendars, in newspaper book reviews, and as the cover of the United Nations Review in September 1946.
The church remains an active and outward-looking institution. In 2020, during one of the church’s regular tag sales, a church member struck up a conversation with the town liaison about the possibility of building a skatepark on nearby land. What began as an informal suggestion became a full community project. The church presented a plan, contributed thousands of dollars, and volunteered hundreds of hours of labor to build the park, and has continued to maintain it in the years since. The congregation was also involved in the development of the skatepark in nearby Bennington, which opened in the fall of 2025.
Beyond the skatepark, the church hosts regular tag sales, community gatherings, and other initiatives, continuing the same tradition of openness and welcome that has defined it since 1790.
Services are held every Sunday at 11:00 a.m.
Historical photos:
Steeple History:
