The Round Church of Richmond
Near Burlington, Vermont
In the center of Richmond, Vermont, stands one of the most unusual religious buildings in New England. The Round Church was completed in eighteen thirteen, and despite its name it is actually sixteen-sided, a sixteen-panel polygon that reads as round from a distance. It was built cooperatively by five different Protestant congregations who pooled their money and labor to construct a shared meetinghouse when none of them could afford a building alone.
Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, Christians, and Universalists all worshipped under the same roof in rotating turns. The arrangement eventually unraveled as the denominations grew and their theological differences sharpened, but the building itself survived. The town of Richmond used it for town meetings until nineteen seventy-three, and the Richmond Historical Society has cared for it since nineteen seventy-six.
Today the Round Church is a National Historic Landmark and hosts concerts, weddings, and community events. It stands as an accidental piece of American architectural history, built not from grand ambition but from frontier practicality.
