First Congregational Church, East Hartford (1835)

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In 1701, the people of Hartford living east of the Connecticut river were granted the right to their own minister. In 1783, when East Hartford became a separate town, the church became the First Congregational Church in East Hartford. The first meeting house was begun in 1699 and took several years to complete. It was later replaced by the second meeting house in 1740, which was torn down in 1835 when the current structure was built on Main Street. The completed church was dedicated in January 1836. The interior was extensively altered after a fire in 1876.

St. John’s Episcopal Church, East Hartford (1867)

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St. John’s Episcopal Church, at Rector and Main Streets in East Hartford, was built between 1867 and 1869. The High Victorian Gothic-style church was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter, and displays that architect‘s interest in polychromatism, which he would use again in his Church of the Good Shepherd and Parish House in Hartford and Trinity Church in Wethersfield, as well as in the domestic architecture of the Mark Twain House in Hartford. Rev. John J. McCook, the volunteer rector of St. John’s Parish at the time, was instrumental in bringing about the building of the church.