St. Catherine Church, Broad Brook (1881)

Rev. James Smyth, pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Windsor Locks, celebrated the first Catholic Mass to take place in the Broad Brook section of East Windsor in 1856. Later, a mission church dedicated to St Patrick was built on land donated by Broad Brook Catholics and it remained in use until 1880. Originally under the jurisdiction of St. Bernard’s, Rockville, the mission was transferred in 1863 to the new parish of St. Patrick’s in Thompsonville. The cornerstone for a new mission church, located at the intersection of Rye Street, Main Street and Windsorville Road in Broad Brook, was laid by Bishop Lawrence S. McMahon of Hartford in early fall of 1880 and the church was completed late the following year. The church again became a mission of Rockville in 1882 and four years later, in 1886, became a separate parish, dedicated to St. Catherine of Siena. The church has stained glass windows depicting scenes from the life of St. Catherine designed by the artist Emil Frei. The adjoining rectory was completed in 1887. The church has been updated over the years, with a new wing being added in 1957. Now, together with St. Philip Church in East Windsor, St. Catherine’s is part of St. Marianne Cope Parish.

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Broad Brook Congregational Church (1893)

The Congregational Church in the village of Broad Brook in the Town of East Windsor was first organized in 1849 and their original church building was dedicated in January of 1854. After the church was burned on February 8, 1893, construction began on the current building, which was dedicated on January 24, 1894. As a reporter for the Hartford Courant newspaper noted at the time, “The church as a whole is complete in all its equipments and presents a very neat and cheerful appearance.”

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Abington Congregational Church (1751)

The oldest ecclesiastical building in the State of Connecticut that has been continuously used for its original religious purpose is the Abington Congregational Church in the Town of Pomfret. Overcrowding at the Pomfret meetinghouse, as well as the great distance residents from the Abington section of town had to travel to attend services there, led to the creation of a separate ecclesiastical society in Abington 1749. The new congregation erected its own meetinghouse in 1751, a building that is one of the few surviving examples in New England of eighteenth-century peg and beam construction. The building was completely remodeled in the Greek Revival style between 1834 and 1840 by the architect-builder Edwin Fitch of Mansfield. Among various interior and exterior alterations, Fitch created a new facade featuring four Doric pilasters and replaced the church‘s 1802 bell tower with the current three-stage steeple.

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Old Stone Church, New Preston (1824)

New Preston Hill Congregational Church.

The Old Stone Church, also known as the Hill Church and the Stone Meetinghouse, is located adjacent to the New Preston Hill Green in the town of Washington. The successor to two earlier church buildings, erected in 1754 and 1766, that no longer survive, the Stone Church was built in 1824 by the Ecclesiastical Society of New Preston. It was at the heart of a rural community that included two other stone notable buildings: a tavern, built in 1800 across the street, and a schoolhouse, built in 1850 behind the church. In 1853 the congregation built a new church at New Preston Center, which was developing as an industrial center. The New Preston Hill area has maintained its rural character and the Old Stone Church, which lacks modern heating, continued to be used during the summer months.

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New Preston Congregational Church (1853)

The New Preston Congregational Church, located at 15 Church Street in the New Preston section of the town of Washington, was built in about 1853. The New Preston Ecclesiastical Society was originally established in 1753 and its first meeting house was located southwest of the common at New Preston Hill (at the intersection of New Preston Hill, Findley, & Gunn Hill Roads). The Society decided to build a second meeting house in 1766 at the northwest corner of the common and this was replaced in 1824 by a stone church building that still exists today and is known as the Hill Church. By the mid-nineteenth century, New Preston Center, a mile to the east, had developed into an industrial center and the congregation decided (after much debate) to erect a new church there in 1853. This is the current New Preston Congregational Church, while the Hill Church is used for summer services. In 1886 the church ordered a Steere & Turner Opus #221 organ which was restored in 1969.

St. Paul’s Church, Bantam (1843)

In 1797, Episcopalians in the Bantam section of Litchfield organized a new parish, originally called the Second Episcopal Society, which separated from the town’s First Episcopal Society (now St. Michael’s Church). The new parish‘s original building, known as the West Church, was located on a rise near the intersection of Bantam Road and Maple Street known as Church Hill, across from the Bantam cemetery. The parish’s current church, dedicated to Saint Paul, was built in 1843 and was consecrated by Bishop Thomas C. Brownell on November 1, 1844. The Greek Revival-style building, located at 802 Bantam Road, was extended to the rear with an addition constructed in two stages: an undercroft built in 1951-2 and a second story completed in 1962-3. The church has six Gothic-style stained glass windows that were installed in 1885-6. A more detailed history of the church can be found in this PDF document.