St. Joseph's Church, Main St., Waltham, MA, 1964

About this postcard

A mid-century modern church with a pale stone facade, a large plain cross mounted between two tall grid-paned windows, and two sets of brown double doors reached by stone steps. Conical shrubs and low hedges line the terraced entrance, with a leafy tree at the right. The spare geometry and light stone mark it as postwar church architecture, a break from the older brick and granite parishes of the region. Waltham, a mill and watchmaking city west of Boston, was growing outward in these decades, and new parishes along its main roads followed the population.