East Lexington preserves considerable evidence of its economic, architectural, and intellectual heyday in the early nineteenth century, a time when the area was more prosperous than Lexington Center due to dressing factories and supporting trades. In addition to the significant assemblage of period buildings representing Greek Revival motifs and designs, the east village retains a rare octagonal church. Designed by Charles Follen, Unitarian minister of the newly created East Lexington parish, the building had large pointed arched windows on each side. The original entrance porch and steeple also had Gothic Revival elements, removed after the church merged with the Unitarian congregation and remodeled the building in a Romanesque manner. On the interior, original curved pews complement the unusual worship space. Follen developed his taste for architecture in his native Germany, where his uncle Muller was an architect and recorder of antiquities.