Trinity Episcopal Church in Torrington has a prominent location at the corner of Water and Prospect Streets. The origins of the parish go back to 1843, when it was a mission of Christ Church in Harwinton. The original church building on the site was built of wood in 1844. The parish grew rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century as Torrington industrialized. Some of the early members were laborers from England who were brought to work at the Coe Brass Company. The present granite church building was erected in 1897-1898. Adjacent to the church is a is the parish house, built in 1908-1909, which has an upper parish hall with a stage and a lower hall with Sunday school rooms and a chapel. The parish hall and a Tudor Revival-style rectory, built in 1917, surround a distinctive courtyard.
The Congregational Church in Pomfret Center was organized in 1715 and its first meeting house was erected on White’s Plains, located on Pomfret Hill, just north of Needle’s Eye Road. The next meeting house was built on the town common in Pomfret Center in 1762. Interestingly, the church was painted orange. (In the coming years, the neighboring towns of Windham, Killingly, Thompson, and Brooklyn would emulate Pomfret’s example!). The church’s third meeting house was erected in 1832 on land acquired from a Dr. Waldo. The land was purchased with proceeds generated by the women of the church, who had knitted a hundred pairs of stockings to sell. In erecting the new church, builder Lemuel Holmes salvaged much of the building materials from the previous structure.
On December 7, 2013, a fire (likely caused by an accident during the repair of the building’s front steps) destroyed the historic church. It was soon rebuilt, following the original design as closely as possible, while creating a building that is a little larger than the original and set further back on the property at 13 Church Road. Construction took three years, with the new steeple being raised into place on August 30, 2016.
The Catholic parish of St. Peter’s in Danbury was established in 1851 at a time when many Catholic immigrants who were settling in the area. It was the first Catholic parish in northern Fairfield county and parishioners would walk ten miles from surrounding towns to attend Mass. For a few months in 1851 the parish held services in the court house, but soon acquired a former Universalist church building at the corner of Main and Wooster Streets. In the late 1850s, the parish purchased a lot on Main Street that included a former Congregational church, the church building itself being officially purchased in 1860. That church was renovated for Catholic services and used until a new church was completed. As described in James H. O’Donnell’s History of the Diocese of Hartford (1900) [St. Peter’s is now in the Diocese of Bridgeport]:
The Rev. Philip Sheridan followed Dr. [Ambrose] Manahan in 1865. Four years after his arrival he conceived the design of erecting a Gothic stone church which would not only be an architectural ornament to the town, but a temple worthy of the growing importance of the parish. To this end he removed the pastoral residence to the rear of the lot on the southwest corner of Main street, and on its site began the foundations of the new church. The soil here was sandy and humid, and great difficulty was experienced in securing a solid bed for the foundations. In some places the builders were obliged to grout to the depth of twenty-seven feet. The difficulties were overcome, however, but at an expenditure of nearly $4000. The corner-stone was laid on Sunday, August 28, 1870
The Town of Westport was incorporated in 1835, separating from the Town of Fairfield and taking land from the neighboring towns of Weston and Norwalk. The new town included the village of Saugatuck, which had developed as a prosperous shipping port. The Congregational Church in Saugatuck was erected in 1832 on a commanding site on the south side of the Post Road. The church was enlarged in 1857 to accommodate a growing congregation. Substantial growth in the early twentieth century led to the decision to move the church building to the other side of the Post Road, to a property of eight acres that Morris K. Jesup had donated in 1884. The move took place in 1950 and brought the building to its current location at 245 Post Road East. A new addition to house church school classrooms, offices, and other additional space, was erected in 1954-1956. On the night of Sunday, November 21, 2011, a devastating fireguttedmuch of the building, but the sanctuary was spared the most severe damage and the steeple remained standing. An intensive 2½ year effort of rebuilding and restoration resulted in the rededication of the church on March 8, 2015.
In the early nineteenth century, Methodists in Unionville traveled to Burlington for services. Eventually they began to hold their own meetings in Unionville on the second floor of the Tryon and Sanford store at the intersection of Main and Lovely Streets. Unionville soon grew as a population center and a number of Methodists in Burlington eventually joined their coreligionists in Unionville to build a church on Farmington Avenue in 1867 (near the site that would later have a Friendly’s restaurant). By the 1920s, the Methodists had outgrown their church building and they erected a new one on School Street, on a site where the Solomon Richards Mansion, one of the grandest in Unionville, had been taken down in 1925. Completed the following year, the church, built by local builder John Knibbs, displays the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement. Sometimes called the “Stone Church,” it’s design was modeled on the Lake Mahopec Methodist Church in Mahopec, New York. In 1929 the church officially adopted the name of “Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church.” A parish hall to the rear was erected in 1959. Urban renewal in Unionville in the late 1960s provided the opportunity for the church, now called Memorial United Methodist Church, to relocate again, this time to West Avon Road in Avon. The former church in Unionville is now used by the Town of Farmington as a Youth Center.
The Catholic parish in Pomfret began as a mission of Sacred Heart Church in West Thompson. Services were held in Pomfret Hall before Most Holy Trinity Church was erected in 1885-1887. The church originally stood on Woodstock Road. In 1973 it was moved to its current location at 568 Pomfret Street, at the intersection of Deerfield Road. A house already standing at the new property, built c. 1800 and remodeled in the Colonial Revival style c. 1890, became the church’s rectory.
