Massachusetts's 85 Churches on the National Register of Historic Places

85 Massachusetts churches in the Churches List directory hold National Register of Historic Places listings, and three of them entered on the register's founding day, October 15, 1966: Boston's Old South Church, the Old North Church of Paul Revere's lanterns, and the Old Ship Church in Hingham, built in 1681 and the oldest church building in continuous ecclesiastical use in the United States.

Middlesex County leads with 24 register-listed churches, ahead of Suffolk (Boston) with 14 and Bristol with 11. The Middlesex number tells the Massachusetts story: the state's deepest historic church stock sits in the town centers ringing Boston, where 17th- and 18th-century meeting houses still hold their greens.

The complete list of Massachusetts churches on the National Register

The table lists all 85 Massachusetts congregations in this directory whose buildings hold National Register of Historic Places listings as of June 11, 2026. Click a column to sort; the county menu filters the list.

When did Massachusetts churches enter the National Register?

After the 1966 founding trio, Massachusetts listed 16 churches in the 1970s and peaked with 34 in the 1980s, when the state's historical commission ran systematic town-center surveys. The 1990s added 15. The pace since 2000 has been steady single digits per decade, with 8 in the 2010s; the eligible stock is largely documented, and new listings now follow rehabilitation projects rather than surveys.

Which Massachusetts counties hold the most register-listed churches?

Where the register-listed churches stand: the map

How this list was assembled

The list joins the Churches List directory (3,708 Massachusetts congregations as of June 11, 2026) against the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places database by building location and name. 85 matches hold as of the snapshot date; the earliest Massachusetts church listing dates to 1966. A register listing covers the building, not the congregation, and some listed buildings house congregations younger than the walls. Corrections are applied through the corrections page.

Related reading in The Letter: the Episcopal Atlantic corridor maps the coastal church belt that begins in Massachusetts, and New York's 306 register-listed churches holds the only larger state list. The Massachusetts state page lists all 3,708 Massachusetts churches in the directory.