The first ecclesiastical society of Plainville began in 1840, when the congregation split off from the church in Farmington to become the Second Congregational Church of Farmington. Plainville was incorporated as a seperate town in 1869. The current Gothic Revival style Congregational Church of Plainville was built in 1850 and was designed by the New Haven architect Henry Austin.
The history of the Episcopal Church in Meriden goes back to 1775, when a group loyal to the Church of England met secretly to worship at the Moses Andrews Homestead on West Main Street. St Andrew’s Parish was officially established in 1789 and the first church building, made of wood, was constructed in 1810 at the location of the burying ground. The second church was built in 1848 on Broad Street and later became the first church building used by St. Rose of Lima Church. The cornerstone of the present St. Andrew’s Church, at the intersection of Catlin, Liberty and East Main Streets, was laid in 1866. The church, consecrated the following year, was constructed of Portland brownstone and was designed by Henry Dudley of New York, an English-born architect known for his Gothic Revival churches.
Gillette Castle was built by the actor and playwright William Gillette. Born in Hartford in 1853, William Hooker Gillette was the son of Senator Francis Gillette and the nephew of John Hooker and Isabella Beecher Hooker. He grew up in Hartford’s Nook Farm neighborhood and made his debut in Mark Twain‘s Gilded Age in 1877. Gillette became most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes on the stage. He also wrote plays and a work of theory celled The Illusion of the First Time in Acting (1915). Gillette built his castle, in East Haddam, on the southernmost hill of a chain called the Seven Sisters. Modeled on the ruins of Medieval German fortress on the Rhine, Gillette’s Castle was built between 1914 and 1919 of local fieldstone supported by a steel framework. He supervised the construction of the distinctive building, which was surrounded by Gillette‘s eighty-four acre estate on the Connecticut River. He also had his own steam train. Gillette, who died in 1937, stated in his will that he did not want his property to going to “some blithering saphead who has no conception of where he is or with what surrounded.” The home and estate was purchased by the State in 1943 to become the Gillette Castle State Park. Recently restored, the castle is open to the public for tours.
Merry Christmas!! Today our building is St. Michael’s Church, on Derby Avenue in Derby. Polish immigrants established St. Michael the Archangel parish in 1903 and the church was built in 1906-1907. A neighboring parish school, staffed by the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, was built in 1914.
St. Mary’s Church in New Haven was built by the first Catholic parish in the city and the second in Connecticut, founded in 1832 by the Irish Immigrant community. To express their growing influence, the Gothic Revival style church was constructed in 1870 on Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven’s most privileged neighborhood. The architect was James J. Murphy of Providence. A spire was originally planned, but not completed until just a few years ago. The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal service organization founded in 1882 and based in New Haven, originally met in the basement of the church.
On the other side of Derby Green from the Sterling Opera House is Immanuel St. James Episcopal Church, on Minerva Street. Built in 1843, the building had two predecessors: the church on Elm Street in what is now Ansonia, at the Old Episcopal Graveyard (which was later moved across the street and attached to the Humphreys House), and its successor on Derby Avenue, which was called St. James Church. When the third building was constructed in 1843, some families continued to worship at the old church and organized Christ Church parish in Ansonia. In 1970, St. James Church in Derby began a Joint Ministry with Immanuel Church in Ansonia, and the two merged in 1991. The stone church was was built by the stonemason Harvey Johnson and the carpenter Nelson Hinman. The land for the church was donated by Sheldon Smith and Anson G. Phelps. A rectory was constructed next door in 1853.
The house at 200 Beacon Street in Hartford was built around 1875, when the earliest homes in that section of the West End of Hartford were being constructed. Two developers, Burdett Loomis and Joseph Woodruff, opened Beacon Street, between Farmington Ave and Warrenton Ave, in 1872 and the Gothic Revival-style home at no. 200 was built soon after. Bad economic conditions soon followed, so that additional houses were not built in the area until the 1890s and after. Another house, built around the same time, is the Kenyon House on nearby Kenyon Street.