Old South Church, (properly Old South Church in Boston) (built 1874), is a church of the United Church of Christ in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was designed in the Gothic Revival style by Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears and was completed in 1873. The church, which was built on newly filled land in the Back Bay section of Boston, is located at 645 Boylston Street on Copley Square. It is home to one of the older religious communities in the United States and is a U.S. National Historic Landmark. It is also known as New Old South.

The church building was designed between 1870 and 1872 by the Boston architectural firm of Cummings and Sears in the Venetian Gothic style. The style follows the precepts of the British cultural theorist and architectural critic John Ruskin (1819–1900) as outlined in his treatise The Stones of Venice. Old South Church in Boston remains one of the most significant examples of Ruskin's influence on American architecture. The architects, Charles Amos Cummings and Willard T. Sears, also designed the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The exterior of the church is primarily built of Roxbury conglomerate commonly called puddingstone. Many arches, and several walls of stone are striped with alternating courses of Roxbury puddingstone and a deep rose sandstone. The porticos and large open arches in the campanile are decorated with simple plate tracery. The upper arches of the porticos are decorated with screens of ornate wrought iron. The building is roofed in alternating bands of red and dark gray slate and the roofline finished with ornamental iron cresting.

Old South Church on Boyleston Street

Photo July 2001

Old South Church

Photo 77a, May 2012