First Baptist Church of Stonington Borough (1889)

The First Baptist Church in Stonington was organized in Stonington Borough in 1775. According to the History of the town of Stonington (1900), by Richard Anson Wheeler:

Its first meetinghouse was not built until the close of the Revolutionary war and was a substantial building, some forty feet square. […] The present house of worship was erected [in 1889] during the pastorate of the Rev. Albert G. Palmer, and is a magnificent building of modern architecture, and most admirably arranged. Owing to the want of a proper title to the site of its former meeting-house [built on Water Street in 1794 and replaced in 1835], and the questionable authority of using its funds in the purchase of the site of its present church [on Main Street], and in order to vest the property entirely in the church, independent of trustees or societies, the members of the church were in 1889 constituted and created by the Legislature of Connecticut a body politic and corporate by the name of the First Baptist Church of Stonington Borough, with full power to receive, hold and mortgage any and all, both real and personal, that may be given or descend to said church.

In 1950, the Baptist Church merged with the Second Congregational Church to form the United Church of Stonington. The old Baptist church was sold in 1957 to become a residence for architect Charles Fuller and wife Anne, who crated an art gallery in the building. The building has continued as a private residence.

First United Methodist Church, Meriden (1949)

Meriden’s first Methodist meetinghouse was built in 1830. This simple structure was later sold and moved to Curtis Street, where it became a carpenter’s shop and later burned down. The first regular Methodist Society was formed in 1844 and a wooden Church was built on Broad Street in 1847. Charles Parker, an industrialist and the first mayor of Meriden, gave a gift which allowed for the construction of a Gothic stone church in 1866. The church was renovated in 1940, but burned the following year. After World War II, money was raised to build the present First United Methodist Church in 1949. The church is at the same location as its predecessor, on East Main Street.

Chevry Lomday Mishnayes (1926)

Congregation Chevry Lomday Mishnayes was founded in Hartford by Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia in 1918. Having no permanent home for their first seven years, the congregation built a shul in 1924-1926 on Bedford Street in Hartford’s Clay Arsenal neighborhood. The building‘s exterior has the same design as the many standard brick apartment buildings that were being constructed in Hartford at the time, but with adaptations for its use as a synagogue. In 1964, the congregation moved to a new shul at 191 Westbourne Parkway and in 1983 merged with Teferes Israel, which merged with Beth David Synagogue in West Hartford in 1993. The former shul on Bedford Street is now the Temple of Prayer and Worship for the House of God.

William F. Baldwin House (1850)

The William F. Baldwin House, at 150 South Street in Litchfield, was built in 1850. In 1886, the house was acquired by Philadelphian F. Ratchford Starr, who ran Echo Farm, a commercial dairy he had begun in Litchfield. Around 1910, when the Colonial Revival influence had come to dominate in Litchfield, the house was altered, probably quite significantly, in that style, most likely by Starr’s daughter, who had inherited the property in 1889.

87-89 Atwood Street, Hartford (1911)

This month’s issue of Hartford magazine has an article about the restoration of a “Perfect Six” apartment building at 87-89 Atwood Street in Hartford’s Asylum Hill neighborhood. Perfect Sixes, with three floors, double bow-fronts, and six apartments, were very popular in Hartford at the start of the twentieth century. The one on Atwood Street was a particularly stylish one, intended for middle-class residents. Built in 1911 by two Russian immigrants, Louis and Morris Schoolnik, the building had become run down by the 1980s and was shut down by the city in 1997. The Northside Institutions Neighborhood Alliance, which works to revitalize Asylum Hill, sought to acquire and restore the building, a process which took some time, during which the building further deteriorated. The roof collapsed in February 2009, but the reclamation project was able to retain the building’s historic facade facing the street, while the rest was demolished and rebuilt. The converted structure now contains two townhouses.