Prospect

Advent Chapel, Prospect (1886)

Adventists began meeting in the Town of Prospect about 1850 and in 1886 built a chapel on the Green. As described by J.L. Rockey in his History of New Haven County (1892):

The Adventist chapel, at the Center, which is a small but not unattractive frame building, affords a place of worship for members of that faith. It was built within the past six years. The meetings previous to that time were held in private houses, at “Rag Hollow” and other localities. Moses Chandler was one of the most active in the latter movement to give the denomination a permanent place in the town, and the meetings were for a time held at his house. Other members belong to the Tuttle, Tyler, Hotchkiss and Beecher families. In 1890 there were about a score of members, and Seth Woodruff was the minister.

About 1900 the Prospect congregation merged with an Adventist church in Waterbury. Their former chapel, located at 10 Center Street, became the Chapel school house and then the Prospect Senior Center.

St. Anthony Church, Prospect (1962)

In 1936 a mission of St. Mary’s Parish, Union City was established in Prospect. St. Anthony Chapel, on Route 69, was dedicated in 1939. The mission became a St. Anthony Parish in 1943 and on October 20, 1962 a new St. Anthony Church was dedicated at 4 Union City Road.

Harris Platt House (1793)

As described in View from the Top: The Story of Prospect, Connecticut (Biographical Publishing Company: 1995), by John R. Guevin, the house at 3 Union City Road in Prospect was built by Asahel Chittenden, who served in the Revolutionary War, enlisting in 1780. He married Anna Lewis in 1783 and ten years later acquired land from his father-in-law John Lewis, a congregational minister, to build the house. In 1803 Chittenden opened a store in his home, which also had an upstairs ballroom. After his death in 1813, the property was left to his widow, who remarried in 1816 to Robert Hotchkiss. Asahel’s son, Edward Chittenden, later owned the house. From 1828 to 1830 he served as first town clerk of the newly established Town of Prospect and also became postmaster in 1830. He sold the house in 1833 to Woodward Hotchkiss and in 1839 moved to Waterbury, where he became proprietor of a tavern called the Mansion House. In 1852 Hotchkiss sold the building to Harris Platt and his wife Lucinda. It is now home to Pavlik Real Estate.

Prospect Congregational Church (1941)

In 1778, residents of the area around what is now Prospect Green withdrew from the Congregational church in Cheshire and formed their own ecclesiastical society, known as the Columbia Society. Their meeting house was located on the Prospect Green, which is the highest inhabited elevation in New Haven County. The Prospect Congregational Society was formally established in 1798 and continued meeting in the original simple structure until a new edifice was erected in 1841, to the west of the Green. The previous meeting house was moved to a another site nearby where it was used by the Methodist church until 1858. After a fire destroyed the 1841 building, a new fieldstone church was erected. This too was destroyed by fire and was replaced by the current church, built in 1941.

Center School, Prospect (1867)

Center School is a one-room school house built on the Green in Prospect in 1867 at a cost of $900. It was erected to replace an earlier school house that had burned. The building was used as a school until the nearby Community School was built in 1936. The old school house was then used for various purposes by the town until it became a museum operated by the Prospect Historical Society.