Trinity Parish was established in Hartford’s Asylum Hill neighborhood in 1859. The next year, a brownstone former Unitarian church was moved from downtown Hartford to serve as the parish’s first building. In 1892, it was replaced by a new Gothic Revival-style church, designed by Frederick C. Withers, an architect who had earlier designed the mansion known as Goodwin Castle for Rev. Francis Goodwin, Trinity’s third Rector, in 1873. The tower, designed by LaFarge & Morris, was added in 1912.
The Rocky Hill Congregational Church was constructed on Old Main Street, in Rocky Hill, in 1808. The congregation had been organized in 1727, when the town was still part of Wethersfield. This notable Federal-style church was extensively documented for the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1938.
Once, together with the nearby Polish National Home, at the heart of a vibrant Polish community in Hartford, SS Cyril and Methodius Church still serves Polish-Americans. Built in 1917, on Charter Oak Avenue, the church features elements of the Gothic Revival, Romanesque Revival and High Victorian Gothic styles.
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The building on High Street in Glastonbury, which is currently the home of the South Glastonbury Public Library, was originally built in 1828 as a Methodist Church. Constructed by Parley Bidwell, who also built Glastonbury’s first Town Hall, the church had separate entrances for men and women. In the 1860s, the building was used as an unofficial African-American church and anti-slavery rallies were held there. By 1910, the local cotton mills had closed and the Methodist congregation had greatly decreased. The building was sold and used only for summer services until 1927, when the South Glastonbury Library first opened. At that time, the building was owned by Mrs. Helen Walsh Thompson, who allowed it to be used as a library for a nominal fee until 1941, when she gave it to the South Glastonbury Library Association.
Built between 1871 and 1874, Trinity Episcopal Church, on Main Street in Wethersfield, was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter, who also designed the Church of the Good Shepherd and the Mark Twain House, both in Hartford. Like the earlier Church of the Good Shepherd, Trinity Church is in the High Victorian Gothic style and has a similar polychromatic roof.
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The Chapel of Trinity College in Hartford was completed in 1932 and was designed by Philip H. Frohman in the Perpendicular Gothic style. Frohman was the architect of the Washington National Cathedral. There’s an art history thesis paper (pdf file) about the Chapel.
An excellent example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture, the Rockville Union Congregational Church in Vernon was begun in 1889 and completed the following year. It represents the union of two congregations: In 1888, the First Congregational Church of Rockville sold its land for the building of the Memorial Hall Building, while the Second Congregational Church building was destroyed in a fire. The two voted to combine and build a new church, constructed of stone and designed by Warren H. Hayes of Minneapolis, on the site where the Second Congregational Church had stood.
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