The Thai government is building a USD16 million Wat in the Massachusetts suburb of Raynham.
Wat Nawamintararachutis, or NMR Center, will celebrate the life of Thailand’s current monarch, His Majesty the King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who was born in a Cambridge, Massachusetts hospital in 1927.
The 109,000-square-foot complex will have a four-story museum and temple building, sleeping quarters, and a large conference center, all clustered around a spacious courtyard filled with lotus-shaped fountains and fountains with lotuses. It will be the largest such meditation center outside Thailand.
The Raynham temple will also boast such typical Thai elements as a 180-foot spire, cast in bronze and covered in golf leaf. The spire will be made in Thailand and shipped to the United States.
The temple’s design was done by both Thai and American architects who worked to create a meditation center that would contain distinctly Thai Buddhist elements as well as some New England style.
The only other Thai Buddhist temple in Massachusetts is the Boston Buddha Vararam Temple in Bedford, a small center situated on about 2 acres. There are about 4,000 Thais in the state, according to the US Census Bureau, the Boston Globe reported.
