The Grand Army Hall

Scituate's Oldest Public Building

353 Country Way

Reserve It For Your Next Party, Reception or Meeting

• Banquet Seating for up to 100 Guests
• Full Service caterer’s Kitchen
• Stage with Audio-Visual Support
• Handicapped Access
• Nearby Parking Arrangements

Wedding Receptions, Concerts, Lectures, Club Meetings, Parties, Art Shows, Recitals, Funerals Political Meetings, Dinners

Ask About The Scituate Wedding Package (Lighthouse Wedding, Lawson Park Photo Shoot, GAR Reception) A sea-side exchange of vows in the shadow of one of America’s most historic lighthouses; The Wedding Party’s photos taken on beautiful Lawson Common as the guests gather at the newly renovated Grand Army Hall for toasts, dancing, and the Wedding Banquet. Ask our planner for all the details for this or any other memorable event you might imagine.

The Grand Army Hall
The Hall has a full caterer’s kitchen with the ability to heat and refrigerate; rest rooms for men, ladies and the handicapped; and banquet or lecture seating for 100. It is heated and air-conditioned. There is parking for twenty cars near the hall and for 100 more just down the street at the Masonic Temple. It has a small stage, with outlets for lighting and sound amplification.

The Scituate Historical Society, which manages the Hall, looks forward to the day when it becomes a self-sustaining meeting house and social center. Rental rates for Hall use are affordable and priced to allow community groups and private citizens to be able to enjoy this beautiful building. Still, it is recommended that potential users book the hall well in advance of the event, in order to avoid disappointment.

Call for details and availability at
781-544-0109

HISTORY:
In 1825 the Baptist Society contracted Zeba Cushing to build a meeting house on land purchased by the Society from Nehimiah Curtis. By 1866 the fourth-one year old structure could no longer accommodate the Baptist Society’s growing flock, so the Society sold it to Joshua Jenkins of Scituate for $600.

Jenkins converted the former meeting house into a hall, constructing a stage and renting it to social and benevolent groups for meetings and entertainments. In 1875, 120 local veterans who had served in the Civil War formed George W. Perry Post #31 Grand Army of the Republic, and in 1883, purchased the hall from the Jenkins family, renaming it the Grand Army Hall.

For the next 50 years, the Grand Army Hall was the scene for many town gatherings. Patriotic speeches echoed from its walls on Memorial Day, July 4th, and later on Armistic/Veterans Day. Many an old soldier, who had shouldered a musket in Mr. Lincoln’s Army as a young man recounted stories of the mud of old Virginia within its walls. The Women’s Relief Corps organized events to raise money for disabled veterans and their families, and the Charles F. Bates Camp, Sons of Union Veterans raised money for the care of veterans’ graves in the Hall as well. In addition the  Hall witnessed high school recitals and dances, minsrel shows, lectures, debates, liberty loan dries, holidasy pageants, auctions, whist parties, suppers and numerous other events. With the passing of Scituate’s last Civil War Veteran, Francis M. Litchfield, in 1936, the hall continued to be managed by the Women’s Relief Corps and the Sons of Union Veterans.

In 1953 the town of Scituate took over the Hall, and for the next twenty years it was used regularly. However, the ravages of time and neglect began to take their toll on the aging structure, and in 1997 the Town sold the building to the Scituate Historical Society.

On July 26, 2008, the Grand Army Hall, Scituate’s oldest public building, reopened, refurbished and restored, and ready for its one hundred and eighty-third year of use.