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(Photograph by Curtis B. Johnson, C. B. Johnson Photography)
Sited on the hill at the head of S. Main and Madison streets is this simple but sophisticated neo-Gothic church. It is one of four churches, along with St. Dominic's in Proctor, St. Stephen's in Winooski, and St. Mary's in Springfield, commissioned by the Vermont Catholic diocese in the late 1920s from Roman Catholic church architects Maginnis and Walsh of Boston. Irish-born Charles Maginnis was a follower of Ralph Adams Cram and a prominent Gothicist. In his carefully composed parish churches he sought an almost primitive simplicity, drawing on the austere forms of northern European Romanesque and village Gothic. His Christ the King is executed in smoothly dressed random-sized white marble. Its crisp edges stress the repeated angled profiles of nave, porch, tower, and broad buttresses, while the splayed lancets, rose window, and portal convey its massiveness. The spare sculptural qualities of the walls are matched by broad slate roofs, activated by a polygonal stair tower, slated lutherns, and the sharp spire of the bell tower. Contrasting with the planar surfaces are moments of decoration including the cement-stone tracery of the windows and the head molding of the portal that rises to support a statue of Christ by local carver Aristide Piccini. Inside are a black and white marble floor, decorated oak roof trusses, stained glass, and finely carved reredos, tabernacle, and organ loft.