In 1806, Episcopalians in Nayaug (South Glastonbury) established an Episcopal Society and built a church in 1812-13. The church was officially consecrated as St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in 1821 and served as a church until a new church was consecrated in 1838. The old church was sold and became a school. It was moved further down Main Street in 1860 and was torn down in 1933. The 1838 church is still in use, with few modern modifications to the original structure.
In this post I’m trying something new: many of the links embedded below point to articles from the Hartford Courant from the 1920s, available at iconn.org (for those with a Connecticut Library Card).
There were once two Baptist Churches on Main Street in Hartford. The First Baptist Church, originally located (from 1798 to 1831) at the corner Market and Temple Streets, moved to a second building on Main Street and finally to a third, at Main and Talcott Streets. The South Baptist Church had two edifices, the first built in the 1830s and the second, at Main and Elm, dating to 1854. In the 1920s, the two Baptist churches united to form the Central Baptist Church. Worship services continued at the First Baptist Church, while the former South Baptist Church was demolished and a new church built on the site for the combined Central Baptist congregation. While many other churches at the time had been moving to neighborhoods to the west, the Baptist Church, after considering such a move for financial reasons, decided to remain on Main Street. Ground was broken in 1924, the cornerstone was laid the following year and the completed church was dedicated in 1926. Designed by Isaac A. Allen, the church would contain a large auditorium and gymnasium.
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in New Britain began in 1836 and the first church building was located on East Main Street. This small wooden structure, later relocated to become St. Mary’s Schoolhouse, was succeeded by a more elaborate wood second church, built in 1848 on the corner of West Main and Washington Streets. Enlarged in 1859, it was replaced by the current granite church, built in 1921 and consecrated the following year. The church has stained glass windows that were originally in the second church building, as well as ones commissioned from the studio of William Morris.
The Old Town Hall of Enfield was originally built in 1775 as the Enfield Congregational Church’s third meeting house. By 1848, the building had become overcrowded and the current church was built the following year. With funds from businessman businessman, Orrin Thompson, the old meeting house was converted into the town hall. The building was altered with the removal of the steeple and the addition of a Greek Revival-style front portico. A new town hall was built in 1892 and the old building was neglected until 1923, when it became a community house. The building was later threatened with demolition, but between 1972 and 1980 it was restored by the Enfield Historical Society and then opened as the Old Town Hall Museum.
In 1845, members of the First Congregational Church of Plainfield who resided in the town’s Central Village formed a separate North Plainfield Ecclesiastical Society. They built the Central Village Congregational Church in 1846 on Main Street. In 1927, renovations were made to make room for an organ. The church‘s original steeple was lost in the 1938 hurricane and quickly replaced by the current one.
The Methodist Episcopal Church in Litchfield was established in 1836. Called the United Methodist Church of Litchfield since the 1940s, the congregation’s current church building on West Street was dedicated in 1885.
The first Catholic mass in Chester was held in 1851 and a church was built on Middlesex Ave in 1855. At that time, the Parish served the towns of Chester, Deep River, Essex, Old Saybrook, Westbrook, Old Lyme, Lyme, and Haddam. The Parish received a full-time pastor in 1876 and the current church replaced the original one on the same site in 1891. To make way for the new church, the first church building was sold and moved to the corner of Main Street and Middlesex Avenue. The new St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church was dedicated on February 16, 1892. The church was enlarged in 1929, at which time the peak of the gable roof was lowered and two smaller towers on the right of the front facade were removed.
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