Romanesque Revival - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Universalist Church, New London (1882)

In 1879, Universalists in New London purchased land at the corner of Green and Starr Streets (formerly the site of the Stoll Marble Yard) to construct a church. Formed in 1835, the Universalist Society had previously built a church on Huntington Street in 1843-1844, which it occupied until 1849. They then purchased a former Episcopal church on Main Street, which they later sold, holding services in Allyn Hall until their new church was ready. Constructed under the direction of builder John Bishop (a member of the church who built many houses on neighboring Starr Street) and his brother Charles, the church was completed and dedicated in 1882. It was sold to the Brainard Lodge of Masons in 1896. Since 1997 it has been the Apostolic Cathedral of Hope. The windows were closed up in 1909, but have recently been restored with modern replacements.

Mount St. John School (1908)

St. John’s Industrial School, a Catholic residential school for boys in need of care, was established in Hartford in 1904. An impressive new building for the school, overlooking the Connecticut River, was built in Deep River in 1907-1908. The school was staffed by the Xaverian Brothers, a worldwide teaching congregation, until 1919. An orphanage for boys in Hartford, run Sisters of St. Joseph of Chambery, moved to the site in Deep River and the Sisters of St. Joseph administered the home and school until 1958. Over the years, many additions were made to the facility, which evolved into a Home and School for Boys. The residential program closed in June 2013 and in September The Academy at Mount Saint John (135 Kirtland Street, Deep River) reopened as a Clinical Day School.

Capewell Horse Nail Company Office Building (1900)

The Capewell Horse Nail Company was founded in 1881 by George Capewell, who invented an improved machine for making horseshoe nails. Located next to the old Capewell factory in Hartford is the company’s office building (60 Popieluszko Court, formerly Governor Street), built around 1900. Designed by an unknown architect, the office building features an elaborate brick, brownstone and terra-cotta façade.

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St. Patrick Church, Thompsonville (1904)

Merry Christmas! For Christmas, here is a church in Thompsonville (in Enfield). A Catholic mission church was first built in Enfield at the corner of Pearl and Cross Streets in 1860. The basement of a new church was begun at the corner of Pearl and High Streets in 1892. The completed Saint Patrick Church was dedicated by Bishop Michael A. Tierney on November 20, 1904. On January 5, 1949, a fire, ignited by a vigil light, gutted the church leaving only the outside walls standing. The church was fully restored by November 12, 1950. Today St. Patrick Church and St. Adalbert Church, also in Thompsonville, form the Catholic Communities of St. Patrick and St. Adalbert.

St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church, Niantic (1957)

Today we continue with the Catholic theme, but this time with a church in Niantic. St. Agnes Parish was established in Niantic, East Lyme in 1922. The original wooden church on Prospect (now Haigh) Avenue, opened in November, 1924. Construction on the present church was interrupted by World War II. The foundation had been dug, but was covered over until construction was resumed in the mid-1950s. The parish celebrated its first Mass in the new church, at 22 Haigh Avenue, on February 10, 1957. The former wooden church was used as the parish center and church school until it was razed in 1962 to make way for a new church hall. A new rectory was built in 1967 and the current church hall and classrooms in the 1990s.

St. Mary’s Home for the Aged (1896)

In 1852 four Sisters of Mercy came to Hartford and opened a school in the basement of St. Patrick’s Church in Hartford. The Sisters of Mercy is a religious order founded in Ireland in 1831 by Catherine McAuley to teach and care for the sick and needy. In 1880, the Sisters purchased the Toohey Farm, formerly the Terry Farm, located between Steele Road, Albany Avenue and Asylum Avenue in West Hartford. The old farmhouse became a home for aged people and the produce of he farm supported the home and the nearby Mount Saint Joseph Convent. The house had earlier been the home of Rose Terry Cooke, a writer and poet known for her humorous fiction dealing primarily with New England village life. Additional facilities were built on the farm over the years, which would develop into the Mercy Community, which is devoted to the health and comfort of its members, focusing especially on the elderly poor. The Community offers adult day care, long-term care, rehab and assisted living.

The Mercy Community campus is dominated by a large building with two towers. Work on this four-story brick structure with brownstone trim, designed by John J. Dwyer in 1893, was begun in 1894-1895 (it opened in 1896). At that time, the central administration building was completed, as well as the chapel and the northern of two planned dormitory wings. A decade later (in 1905), the increasing demand for rooms in the facility prompted the construction of the south wing, which more than doubled the number of residents the Home could accommodate. Additional modern wings have been added to the structure over the years.

New Britain Sate Normal School (1883)

The State Normal School in New Britain was founded in 1849. It was the first training school for teachers in Connecticut and the sixth in the nation. According to David Nelson Camp’s History of New Britain (1889):

Proposals had been received by the trustees to locate the school in the city of Middletown, and in Farmington, Southington, and some other towns; and it was after the first of February, 1850, before the persons in New Britain interested in the enterprise were informed that their proposition would be accepted; but on the 15th of May, or in about three months, a building was prepared, and the school was opened. To make the necessary provision, the Educational Fund Company bought the town hall then in process of erection, made alterations to adapt it to the needs of the school, secured additional land, and erected a larger building.

The school was located in this building for the next three decades, except for a period, from 1867 to 1839, when the school was school was temporarily closed. As Camp further relates:

The General Assembly in 1881 appropriated seventy-five thousand dollars for a new building on condition that the town of New Britain would appropriate twenty-five thousand for the same purpose. The appropriation was made and the building was erected on a commanding site overlooking the city and the country to the east of New Britain. The new building is 126 feet in entire length by 85 feet in width, the foundations and underpinning being of Portland brown stone and the walls above of brick. The building is heated throughout by steam. It provides study, recitation, and other rooms for the Normal School, and school rooms for a part of the Model and Training Schools. It was opened and occupied in the autumn of 1883.

The building, overlooking Walnut Hill Park, was designed by Warren R. Briggs of Bridgeport. In the building was founded one of the first American kindergartens. The building was soon outgrown. An annex was built in 1891, primarily to add a gymnasium. At a hearing before the State Assembly’s Committee on Education in 1919, the school’s Principal, Marcus White, explained that:

I have a building that was built forty years ago and has not from the day of its completion been fit for teaching purposes. It has no cellar and our winter’s coal supply has to be dumped outside. The lighting is so bad that you have to carry a candle to find your way to some of the recitation rooms without falling upstairs. A New Britain manufacturer told me recently, after inspecting the plant, that if he made his help work in a place like that he would be arrested and ought to be. When the girls come to New Britain they have no place to live and engage in any social life. Some of those girls are living two together in small rooms, some of them sleeping two in a bed. We have no land surrounding the building. If a girl drops a piece of paper out of a window it falls on somebody else’s land. There is no room for tennis courts or any of those things that would enable us to develop a school which Connecticut girls could honestly want to attend. [quoted in the “Predicts Shortage of 500 Teachers,” Hartford Courant, March 14, 1919]

In 1922, the school moved to a new campus on Stanley street and later developed into Central Connecticut State University. From 1925 to 1988, the old State Normal School building (27 Hillside Place) served as the New Britain Board of Education and School Administration Offices. In 1989-1991, the building was converted into condominium units.