| Universalist church |
| 1855 |
| Cobblestone Museum Society |
| Childs, Orleans Country |
| Early vernacular Greek Revival buildings were meeting houses such as churches and
town halls. Having rejected monarchy, privileged classes, and established churches,
Americans looked past Europe and imperial Rome to the first republicans for their
models and heroes. Some Americans saw their country as the new Greece and gave its
counties and towns classical names. States built capitol buildings in the Greek Revival
style. Women wore Greek-inspired dresses and hair fashions. Grecian decorative items
such as urns were common in middle class parlors and yards. A Greek Revival meeting house was appropriate for the Universalists, a sect that stressed the role of reason in religion. The Cobblestone Museum's collection of 19th century structures is open to the public from May to October. |