The wealthy merchant Marcellus J. Ayer built in the Richardsonian Romanesque style the First Spiritual Temple of the Working Union of Progressive Spiritualists as a center of “psychic phenomena” for the society he founded. Notice the checkerboard pattern wrapping the ground floor and the fine foliate carvings on the entrance pavilion and above the fourth floor. Clarence H. Blackall converted the upper auditorium to a theater in 1913 in order to raise income for the temple. Fine theater signage adorned the renovated exterior, but again in 1985, the theater ceded to commercial enterprise. In 1975, the ground level was altered from a café, and its glass shed became part of a greenhouse restaurant.