Province Road Meeting House

Situated on the historic Province Road, laid out in the 1760s, is the Province Road Meeting House, erected in 1792 and one of the oldest buildings of its type in the Lakes Region. Like other similar structures in Sanbornton (Crockett’s Corner) (see BE33), New Hampton (see BE37), and Gilmanton (see BE6), this modest, wood-frame and clapboard meetinghouse is plain in exterior appearance. It is one-story high, gable-roofed, and rectangular in floor plan, with a single, sparsely decorated interior space for religious services and other public assemblies. Though largely vernacular, the building displays some impact of the Federal style in its roof cornices, double-sash fenestration, and, on its main facade, the moldings and transom lights of its paired front doorways, and the semicircular louver in the closed gable pediment above. Set on the front roof ridge is a square, open belfry with broken pyramidal roof clearly dating from after the Civil War. Limited documentation that exists for the meetinghouse indicates that it was altered, likely on the interior, in 1836.