Churches - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Covenant Congregational Church (1960)

Covenant Congregational Church in West Hartford began as the Swedish Zion Congregational Church, established in Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood in 1889. The congregation’s first church building was constructed on Hungerford Street in 1892. Its name was changed to Covenant Congregational Church in 1938. Covenant Congregational Church later moved to West Hartford, laying the cornerstone to its present church on April 24, 1960. Located at the intersection of Sedgwick Road and Westminster Drive, the church was designed by Painchaud and Ryder of Madison, Wisconsin and was built by Bartlett, Brainard & Eacott of West Hartford. The building was dedicated on October 16, 1960. The church, which is Lutheran in theology and Congregational in organization, is affiliated with the Evangelical Covenant Church.

Newent Congregational Church (1858)

The Congregational Church in Newent (Lisbon) began as The Meeting House Assembly in 1723. The congregation occupied two buildings before the current Newent Congregational Church was dedicated in 1858. It was designed and built by Ebenezer Tracey, a prominent cabinetmaker from Lisbon. Lisbon’s old “Town House” was moved in 1953 and attached to the southwest corner of the church.

First Congregational Church of Watertown (1839)

The Ecclesiastical Society of Westbury, now Watertown, was established in 1739 and the first Congregational meeting house was built in 1741 on a corner of the Old Watertown Cemetery at French and Main Streets. The second meeting house was constructed in 1772 where the Town Hall of Watertown now stands. The third and current building of the First Congregational Church of Watertown was erected in 1839 on a hill overlooking the town’s Public Green. The building was designed and erected by master builder Steven Baldwin, whose contract called for a structure that would match the size and style of the Plymouth Congregational Church, built the year before. (more…)

Plainville Campground (1865-1910)

Camp meetings, religious revival meetings where parishioners would set up their carts and tents around a central preaching platform, were once a vital feature of frontier American Protestant Evangelicalism in the nineteenth century. Participants, freed from their daily routines, could attend the almost continuous services that often lasted several days. While Presbyterians and Baptists sponsored camp meetings, these religious gatherings came to be particularly associated with the Methodist denomination. Methodists soon introduced the camp meeting, originally a western phenomenon that flourished before the Civil War, to the east.

The New Haven District of the Methodist Church founded a campground for summer revival meetings in the west end of Plainville (320 Camp Street) in 1865. Methodist camp meetings would continue to be held there every summer until 1957. Initially tents were pitched around a central platform. Soon the Association Building was constructed, where equipment could be stored. Individual churches then began constructing 2-story cottages facing the center of the Campground, along what is known as The Circle. Nineteen of these central cottages survive today. Individual families also began to build their own cottages on the narrow avenues radiating from The Circle, replacing the tents of the campground‘s early years. Most of the cottages date from the 1880s to 1910, although a few were constructed as late as 1925. The present Auditorium building was built around 1905 in place of the original preaching platform. At one time a screened pavilion, the Auditorium is now open to the outside. The Plainville Campground Association purchased the property from the Methodists in 1957. 87 of the cottages are now private residences, the other 39 being owned by various churches. A few of the cottages have been modified for year-round use, while the rest are occupied in the summer. I have additional photos of the Campground: (more…)

Plymouth Congregational Church (1838)

The Ecclesiastical Society of the section of Waterbury called Northbury (now Plymouth) was organized in 1739. The Society originally met in a building on the parish’s west side (now Thomaston). When plans were soon made to construct a meeting house on the east side, a number of west side settlers broke from the Congregational Society to form an Episcopal Society. (Plymouth was incorporated as a town in 1795 and Thomaston in 1875). As related in Francis Atwater’s History of the town of Plymouth, Connecticut (1895):

The Congregational society had its first home on the hill, and there it has always been, nor would an Episcopal society have been formed in Thomaston then if the church had been built here. The conflict was primarily of locality and only secondarily of ecclesiastical order.

The first meeting house (built c. 1747) was replaced by a second, built in 1792. The current Plymouth Congregational Church, which faces Plymouth Green, was built in 1838. It has wooden clockworks built by Eli Terry and donated by him to the church. (more…)

First Baptist Church of Waterbury (1917)

The First Baptist Church of Waterbury was organized in 1803. At first, meetings were held in members’ homes or outdoors. The first meeting house was built in 1818 at the Mill Mill Plain crossroads, two-and-a-half miles from the center of town. It had no paint, plaster or chimney and the seats were wooden benches without backs. The second house of worship was erected (after considerable financial difficulties) c. 1840 in the town center on South Main Street. It was later significantly remodeled and extended, the entrance being moved to the Bank Street side of the building (the church spire was later taken down after it was deemed unsafe). This church was later replaced by a new one, built on Grand Street and dedicated in 1883. It was destroyed by fire in 1912. The corner stone of the church’s fourth building, at 208 Grove Street (located in a primarily residential area), was laid on October 3, 1915 and the completed church was dedicated in 1917. The Baptists later moved from the building, which is now New Life of Waterbury Church.

St. Joseph’s Church, Suffield (1952)

Polish immigrants in Suffield organized the St. Joseph Polish Society in 1905 and purchased land for a church. Suffield had been under the care of priests from Windsor Locks, but the town’s Polish Catholics wanted a pastor of their own. St. Joseph’s Parish in Suffield was organized in 1916, the first parish church being the Edwin D. Morgan stable, purchased earlier by the St. Joseph Society. The parish‘s current church was built in 1951-1952.