Hartford’s North Methodist Church was started in 1869 as a mission of the city’s First Methodist Church. A chapel was built on Windsor Avenue (now Main Street) in 1871, followed by the remainder of the church in 1873-1874. This original church building was later sold (it is now the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church). The current North United Methodist Church, at 1205 Albany Avenue, was built in 1919 and was designed by Floyd Paisnes.
Shiloh Baptist Church in Hartford is the city’s fourth oldest black church. It began in 1889 after a split in the membership of Union Baptist Church. The church began in the home of Lucy Roy and then used various halls temporarily, until occupying a church on Mather Street, built in 1902. The current church building, at 350 Albany Avenue, was built in stages. As the Hartford Courant reported on December 7, 1914:
It was decided to build upon the pay-as-you-go plan, and the vestry of the edifice was built, the cornerstone being laid December 4, 1911. The new vestry was dedicated in February, 1912. Since this dedication, this part of the church has been the meeting place of the parish members. Last winter, the temporary roof over the vestry was troublesome because of its leaking. To repair it would have involved the expenditure of some $1,500, and it was decided to make one piece of work of raising the structure to completion.
The completed church, designed by L. D. Bayley, was dedicated on June 27, 1915.
Pages 138 to 139 of my new book, Vanished Downtown Hartford, describe the first two church buildings used by Hartford’s First Methodist Church. The first, at the corner of Chapel and Trumbull Streets, was built in 1821. After the church moved further west in 1860, the former church was used for businesses (including as the office of local architect John C. Mead from 1879 to 1889). The second building, on Asylum Street, was used by the church until 1905. Its tower and Romanesque Revival front facade were removed in 1911, when the building was converted to commercial purposes. The current church edifice was built in 1904 to 1905 on Farmington Avenue, near the West Hartford line. The church is now called the United Methodist Church of Hartford. It merged with St. Paul’s Methodist Church in 1974 and with the South Park Methodist Church in 1982.
The German Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Hartford was organized in 1880. The church acquired the former St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Market Street, which it occupied until 1898. In that year, the church sold the building, which became St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church. The German Lutheran Church then moved to a new building at 49 Charter Oak Avenue. Designed by Albert Fehmer, it was dedicated January 22, 1899. For a brief period, in 1906-1907, the church was used by St. Paul’s English Lutheran Church (as related in a Hartford Courant article from April 3, 1921, “St. Paul’s Lutheran Church Reaches Fifteenth Year”). That church moved its services to the Y.M.C.A. building, but later returned to Charter Oak Avenue, acquiring the German Lutheran Church’s property in 1909. Efforts to consolidate the two church did not work out, however, and the property was returned to the German Lutheran Church in 1911. St. Paul’s Church eventually moved to a building at the corner of Park Street and Park Terrace. The German Lutheran Church of the Reformation merged with the German Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Church, located at the corner of Babcock and Russ Streets, in 1916. This united church finally merged with St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in 1943 to form Grace Lutheran Church. The church on Charter Oak Avenue was sold. In the twentieth century it became Gospel Hall and is now Greater Joy Mission Church Of Deliverance. The church edifice has lost its original small steeple and entry porch with two side stairs. Its three memorial stained glass windows in the front gable have been covered up (and possibly removed).
It’s Hartford Church Week on this blog! The Church of the Immaculate Conception, at 560 Park Street in Hartford, was built in 1894 to serve the many Roman Catholic immigrant factory workers who were then moving to the Frog Hollow neighborhood. The Gothic Revival church was designed by Michael O’Donohue. In 1981, a priest discovered a homeless man frozen to death near the church steps. In response, the church’s basement was opened to homeless men. Church members volunteered to cook meals and donate clothing. The parish became a leader in public outreach in Hartford. In 1990, with the number of homeless people in Hartford increasing, the Immaculate Conception Shelter & Housing Corporation (ICSHC) was formed to confront the issue. When Immaculate Conception Parish merged with St. Anne Parish in 2000, ICSHC purchased the former church property
One of several old factory buildings that survive on Capitol Avenue in Hartford is located at 376-400 Capitol Avenue, at the corner of Flower Street. The building was originally constructed around 1890 as part of the Pratt & Whitney Machine Tool Company, which already had factories across the Park River. The new building was part of the company’s Small Tool Division, which had its address at 285 Flower Street. The structure went through many alterations of the years and additions were made in 1899, 1902 (by Wilson & Bros. of Philadelphia) and 1916 (by Harris & Richards of Philadelphia). The building was later home to the Hartford Office Supply Company and is still known by that name. Plans in recent years to redevelop the vacant property for condominiums have not worked out and the building has been in foreclosure.
Frank T. Simpson helped lead Connecticut’s first civil rights organization. Born in Alabama in 1907, he moved to Hartford in 1929. Active in social work, in 1944 he became the first employee of the Connecticut Inter-Racial Commission, now the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. Simpson eventually became executive secretary and worked to end discrimination. In 1952, Dr. Simpson purchased a 1912-13 Tudor Revival house at 27 Keney Terrace in Hartford. He lived there until his death in 1974. The Waverly School, at 55 Waverly Street in Hartford, was renamed the Dr. Frank T. Simpson-Waverly School in his honor.