St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Hartford (1845)

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, at 30 Prospect Street in New Hartford, was originally built as a Baptist Church in Barkhamsted. As related in the History of Litchfield County, Connecticut (1881):

In 1845—46 a Baptist Church and ecclesiastical society was organized in Pleasant Valley [in Barkhamsted], and a neat house of worship was erected. Rev. George B. Atwell became settled pastor in December, 1846, and Hart Doolittle was elected deacon. The church at this time numbered twenty-six. In 1847 the church gained accessions, and for several years continued to grow and prosper, although its membership never exceeded seventy-five. In 1858, Rev. J. J. Bronson succeeded Elder Atwell as pastor. In 1859 the members who resided in New Hartford formed a separate organization, known as a “Branch of the Pleasant Valley Baptist Church.” The original church, although reduced in numbers and strength, still retained its vitality, and Rev. T. Wrinkle succeeded to the pastorate, and was ordained in June, 1861. He remained but a few months, and the church was left without a pastor until 1865-66, when the remaining members united with the New Hartford branch, the house of worship was removed to that place, and the Baptist Church of Pleasant Valley became merged in that of New Hartford.

The church was moved from Pleasant Valley to New Hartford by being floated down the Farmington River. Its new location was on Holcomb Hill, on the east of the river. The commercial center of town would develop on the west side of the river. It was thought at the time that the East River Road, which ran by the church, would be extended, but instead the current Route 44, on the west side of the river, became the major thoroughfare through town. The Baptist church was acquired by the Lutheran church circa 1907.

Noank Baptist Church (1962)

Located at the highest point in the village of Noank in Groton (18 Cathedral Heights) is the Noank Baptist Church. The congregation dates back to 1843. An early meetinghouse was replaced by a new an Italianate-style church with two spires. The church was destroyed in a fire on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1959. It was rebuilt and the first service in the new building was on Easter Sunday, April 22, 1962, followed by the dedication service and a recital with the new organ on September 16, 1962.

Greenmanville Church (1851)

The Greenmanville Church at Mystic Seaport was built in 1851 during the area’s heyday as a shipbuilding center. As related in Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America, Vol. II (1910):

In 1838 three brothers, George, Clarke and Thomas S. Greenman, members of the First Hopkinton church, settled in Mystic, Conn., and commenced the ship-building business. Thirteen years later, 1849, they built a mill for the manufacture of woolen goods. About these industries sprang up a village called Greenmanville. The most of those working in the ship-yard were Sabbath-keepers, and being several miles removed from any Seventh-day Baptist church, it was deemed wise to organize one. This was done in August, 1850, with about forty members. The constituent members were mostly from the First Hopkinton church, a few from the Waterford church, and one from the Newport church. The largest membership, fifty-six, was reached the first year and it held pretty well up to this for thirty years. Its present (1902) number is eighteen.

Though it never enrolled a large number of members, yet it exercised a wide influence in denominational and other circles. George Greenman, a member of this church, was president of the Seventh-day Baptist Missionary Society for thirty-one years. The leading men of the church took an active part in the anti-slavery struggle, and the temperance cause has been supported by these godly men. Clarke Greenman, Thomas S. Greenman and Benjamin F. Langworthy served the town in the state legislature at different times.

The congregation was depleted with the decline of the shipyard in the 1870s and 1880s and the selling of the woolen mill to owners of another denomination. The church closed in 1904 and the building then served as a private residence and an apartment building before it was acquired by Mystic Seaport in 1955. The Seaport moved the church from its original site (near the current Visitor Center) to its present location. For a time, the church was called the Aloha Meetinghouse and was a nondenominational church. Mystic Seaport added the current tower clock, built in 1857 by the Howard Clock Company of Massachusetts. The clock is on loan from Yale, where it was once located in the Old South Sheffield Hall of the Sheffield Scientific School. (more…)

Main Street Baptist Church, Meriden (1868)

The church at 22 Crown Street in Meriden was built in 1868 as the West Meriden Baptist Church, later renamed the Main Street Baptist Church. Established in 1860, the church had an earlier chapel on the same site. The present church building’s tower was removed in 1946 and in the 1950s the Connecticut Bank & Trust Company built a branch right in front of the building. In 1997 the Baptist Church closed and sold the building to Faith Center Church of God in Christ.

American Legion Hall – Griffith Academy (1874)

The building at 275 Main Street, at the corner of Hartford Avenue, in Wethersfield, was built c. 1874-1876 as a Baptist Church. Declining membership led the church society to vote to disband in 1918 and deed their Main Street property to the Town of Wethersfield for use as a library. The town decided not to proceed with that project and in 1922 the building was sold to Russell K. Bourne D.S.C. Post of the American Legion, which changed it name to the Bourne-Keeney Post 23 in 1949. The name honors Russell K. Bourne, who was killed in action in 1918 during the First World War, and Robert A. Keeney, who lost his life when the USS Indianapolis was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in 1945. The second floor hall of the building maintains the deck of the Minerva, used as training ground for the town’s Sea Scouts. In 2014, the Legion Post sold the building to the Griffith Academy, which teaches Irish dance. The Academy had been renting the Hall for many decades. The veterans continue to use the building as well, now renting the basement.

Conference House, Ellington (1835)

At 113-119 Maple Street in Ellington is a house built in 1835 with Italianate decorative features that were added later. A large second-floor room, known as the Conference Room, was used by the local Baptist Church when it was founded in the 1840s. This church appears not to have continued to the present day, as the current Ellington Baptist Church was established in 1993 by members who had been previously attending the Somers Baptist Church.

I Am That I Am Ministries (1906)

The church at 23 Franklin Street, at the corner of Arch Street, in Ansonia was built between 1900 and 1906: it does not appear on the 1900 Sanborn insurance map, but does appear on the 1906 Sanborn map, where it is labeled “Swedish Church.” In recent years it was the Evangelical Baptist Church (founded in 1958). It was placed on the market in August 2015 and was sold last July. It is now I Am That I Am Ministries Inc.