| Additional Information: | A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, State Historic Preservation Office.
In 1936, when the Painesville Chapel stood abandoned and derelict, architect Alexander Guth, working for the Historic American Buildings Survey, declared the chapel “a veritable bit of New England transplanted to Wisconsin,” thereby sparking a restoration campaign. The original congregants’ descendants formed the Painesville Memorial Association, which restored the building. Guth, however, was mistaken: the chapel’s roots lay not in New England, but in Germany. It was built by a small group of German Freethinkers, the first Freie Gemeinde (Free Congregation) in Wisconsin. These agnostic intellectuals, dedicated to individual freedom of thought, named their chapel after revolutionary thinker Thomas Paine. The group petered out after 1900, but the chapel survives as one of the last Freie Gemeinde halls in the state.
To Guth, the building’s simple Greek Revival design evoked New England, but the German congregants likely chose the style for its popular association with democracy and free thought. Small and rectangular, the clapboard-clad chapel has a front-gabled roof with characteristic eaves returns and triangular pediments over the door and windows. Inside, the building appears as it was described in 1876: portraits of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and geographer Alexander Humboldt hang on the walls, overlooking the original pulpit, pews, and stove. The memorial association rebuilt the foundation and added concrete front steps and electric lighting.
RETURNED EAVES. PEDIMENTS OVER WINDOWS AND DOOR. NARROW PILASTERS.
2007-
resurveyed, appearance unchanged.
2025: The Painesville Chapel property consists of the chapel, a cemetery, and a small cemetery shed. The property is flat and surrounded by tree lines that serve as wind breaks on the east, west, and north sides. The Painesville Chapel was constructed between 1851 and 1852, restored between 1939 and 1942, and rededicated in 1942 as the Painesville Memorial Chapel. It is a one-story, Greek Revival building topped by an asphalt shingle front gable roof with returned eaves. A brick chimney pierces the west slope of the roof. The walls are clad in clapboard and the foundation is constructed of fieldstone. The chapel has regularly spaced, 9/9 double-hung wood sash windows and two narrow, wood panel doors; the windows and doors are pedimented. “PAINESVILLE CHAPEL, 1852,” is painted above the door and signage to the east of the door denotes its rededication and NRHP status. The door is accessed by replacement concrete steps with a simple metal railing.
The west two-thirds of the property, approximately 0.6 acres, contain the Painesville Cemetery. The cemetery is arranged in an organized formation with graves laid out in rows running north to south. Approximately 201 burials are located within the cemetery. The oldest recorded burial is that of Christine Seis Honadel on March 26, 1851, and the most recent burial occurred in 2021. The burials generally appear to be arranged in family sections as old and new burials are intermixed throughout. The burials include members of the original congregation and their descendants. Overall, burials date from the mid-nineteenth century through the twenty-first century. Grave markers are primarily comprised of rectangular and/or arched limestone, marble, and granite with urns, obelisks, and pedestal markers present. Several of the grave markers have been replaced. The cemetery is well-maintained.
At the northeast corner of the property is a small shed constructed circa 1940. It has a side gable, asphalt shingle roof, clapboard siding, and concrete block foundation. It has 6/1 double-hung, wood sash windows and two narrow, wood panel doors. The windows have pediments.
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