Today, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Hebron has a brick Federal style appearance, but when it was erected in 1826, it was more extravagantly Gothic, with numerous turrets and pinnacles. It was thought to have been modeled on a church that Rev. Samuel F. Jarvis had seen in Italy (and was even referred to as “Jarvis’ Folly”). At the time, Bishop Brownell said that it was the second most beautiful church in the diocese after Trinity Church in New Haven. An unusual feature of the design is that the tower is located at the rear of the building rather than the front. The building has had a number of alterations and renovations over the years. The parish was established in 1734, when the controversial Congregational minister Rev. John Bliss and his followers declared themselves for the Church of England and formed the sixth Episcopal church in Connecticut.
Trinity Episcopal Church in Torrington has a prominent location at the corner of Water and Prospect Streets. The origins of the parish go back to 1843, when it was a mission of Christ Church in Harwinton. The original church building on the site was built of wood in 1844. The parish grew rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century as Torrington industrialized. Some of the early members were laborers from England who were brought to work at the Coe Brass Company. The present granite church building was erected in 1897-1898. Adjacent to the church is a is the parish house, built in 1908-1909, which has an upper parish hall with a stage and a lower hall with Sunday school rooms and a chapel. The parish hall and a Tudor Revival-style rectory, built in 1917, surround a distinctive courtyard.
The Catholic parish of St. Peter’s in Danbury was established in 1851 at a time when many Catholic immigrants who were settling in the area. It was the first Catholic parish in northern Fairfield county and parishioners would walk ten miles from surrounding towns to attend Mass. For a few months in 1851 the parish held services in the court house, but soon acquired a former Universalist church building at the corner of Main and Wooster Streets. In the late 1850s, the parish purchased a lot on Main Street that included a former Congregational church, the church building itself being officially purchased in 1860. That church was renovated for Catholic services and used until a new church was completed. As described in James H. O’Donnell’s History of the Diocese of Hartford (1900) [St. Peter’s is now in the Diocese of Bridgeport]:
The Rev. Philip Sheridan followed Dr. [Ambrose] Manahan in 1865. Four years after his arrival he conceived the design of erecting a Gothic stone church which would not only be an architectural ornament to the town, but a temple worthy of the growing importance of the parish. To this end he removed the pastoral residence to the rear of the lot on the southwest corner of Main street, and on its site began the foundations of the new church. The soil here was sandy and humid, and great difficulty was experienced in securing a solid bed for the foundations. In some places the builders were obliged to grout to the depth of twenty-seven feet. The difficulties were overcome, however, but at an expenditure of nearly $4000. The corner-stone was laid on Sunday, August 28, 1870
In the early nineteenth century, Methodists in Unionville traveled to Burlington for services. Eventually they began to hold their own meetings in Unionville on the second floor of the Tryon and Sanford store at the intersection of Main and Lovely Streets. Unionville soon grew as a population center and a number of Methodists in Burlington eventually joined their coreligionists in Unionville to build a church on Farmington Avenue in 1867 (near the site that would later have a Friendly’s restaurant). By the 1920s, the Methodists had outgrown their church building and they erected a new one on School Street, on a site where the Solomon Richards Mansion, one of the grandest in Unionville, had been taken down in 1925. Completed the following year, the church, built by local builder John Knibbs, displays the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement. Sometimes called the “Stone Church,” it’s design was modeled on the Lake Mahopec Methodist Church in Mahopec, New York. In 1929 the church officially adopted the name of “Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church.” A parish hall to the rear was erected in 1959. Urban renewal in Unionville in the late 1960s provided the opportunity for the church, now called Memorial United Methodist Church, to relocate again, this time to West Avon Road in Avon. The former church in Unionville is now used by the Town of Farmington as a Youth Center.
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