Probably the earliest surviving frame still viewable today of a colonial meetinghouse in the Boston area supports the building at 265 Beach Street. The heavy timber frame is probably unique for the bowed tie beams that are unknown on any other surviving colonial building. As the principal religious and civic building of the town from 1710 until 1806, the Rumsey Marsh (after 1738 Chelsea) Meetinghouse represents a common pattern of a rectangular, gabled, exposed-frame building entered on its long side. Twice remodeled for its Unitarian congregation—including a 90-degree reorientation and reworking by Boston architect Thomas Silloway in 1856—the church was eventually converted to a Masonic temple in 1919, when the central section of the roof was raised, and remodeled at the ground level for commercial uses in 1982.