Woodbridge Pizza (1898)

Woodbridge Pizza in Manchester is the most recent occupant of a building erected c. 1898. Commercial structures have occupied the site, at 489 Middle Turnpike East, since the early nineteenth century. At the time the area was a village known as Manchester Green. Its settlement predated the incorporation of Manchester as a town in 1823. The community’s post office, dating to 1808, was originally located across the street in the Woodbridge Tavern, but had been moved to the store by Wells Woodbridge. Located next door is a house built by Wells’ brother, Deodatus Woodbridge. Woodbridge and Keney operated the store in the 1840s. and E. P. Hatch had a store and post office in the 1860s. At one point the store was owned by J. B. Williams, who would later found a famous soap factory in Glastonbury.

Manchester Area Conference of Churches (1898)

On October 11, 1898, the Hartford Courant reported an item of news from South Manchester: “The John Wesley Pentecostal Church has begun the erection of a church building on the lot north of Mrs. Catherine Cotter’s house at the center.” The church, founded in 1897, joined a new denomination, the Church of the Nazarene, in 1908. The Manchester Church of the Nazarene moved to a new church building in 1958. The 1898 church, located at 466 Main Street is now home to the Manchester Area Conference of Churches, which manages such charities as the Community Kitchen and the Community Threads Thrift Shoppe.

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Manchester (1956)

The first St. Mary’s Church in Manchester was organized in 1844, but the parish encountered financial difficulties and was dissolved in 1847. The members reestablished their church as an Episcopal parish in 1851, but the church again closed in 1869. Regular services were eventually reestablished in 1874 and on June 26, 1882, the cornerstone was laid for a new church on Church Street on land donated by the Cheney Brothers of the famous South Manchester silk mills. The church was consecrated on June 7, 1884. A new and larger church was planned in the 1920s, but the Great Depression slowed financing of the project. In 1953, ground was eventually broken for a new church, which was dedicated on September 5, 1956. The church faces Park Street and is connected to the old 1884 church, now called Resurrection Chapel, which was renovated in 2009 and has five Tiffany stained glass windows.

Keeney Schoolhouse (1751)

The Keeney Schoolhouse in Manchester was built around 1751 on Keeney Street. Little is known of its subsequent history until 1975, when the Town’s Bicentennial Committee voted to restore the building and relocate it to the grounds of the Cheney Homestead to become a museum, furnished and maintained by the Manchester Historical Society. The former schoolhouse had long been used as a farm building by that point and was in such a deteriorated condition that a restoration was not possible. Instead a replica was constructed, complete with rounded ceiling. It was rebuilt utilizing as much material from the original structure as possible.