Stevens, John

STEVENS, John (1823-1881) of Boston sought work in Saint John, N.B. immediately after the Great Fire there in June 1877. He prepared a refined Second Empire design for Weldon School and executed several commissions for commercial buildings. His best known work there was the Leinster Street Baptist Church, 1878-79, a design which was "...in outline and general features based on models of the Byzantine period" (American Architect & Building News [Boston], iv, 28 Sept. 1878, 111, descrip.). Active in Boston from 1851 he was a prolific ecclesiastical designer who executed over one hundred commissions for churches, either under his own name or in collaboration with his son J. Walter Stevens, with whom he formed a partnership in 1877. He was "....a man of considerable ability in his time, though he was not fortunate in the accumulation of property. His real estate shrank in the late financial depression, and he was left almost penniless" (obituary in the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1882, 11). Stevens died in Worcester, Mass. on 14 April 1881 (obit. Daily Sun [Saint John], 27 April 1881, 3)

WELDON SCHOOL, 1877-78 (dwgs. at NBA, Mott Coll., item 426B)
CHAPMAN BUILDING, Charlotte Street, 1877-78 (Daily News [Saint John], 3 Dec. 1877, 3)
WENTWORTH STREET, block for John March, 1877-78 (Daily News [Saint John], 8 Dec. 1877, 3)
LEINSTER STREET BAPTIST CHURCH, 1878-79 (Daily News [Saint John], 22 July 1878, 3, descrip.; Daily Sun [Saint John], 29 Sept. 1879, 3, descrip.)