Hartford - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Asylum Hill Congregational Church (1865)

As the nineteenth century progressed, the Gothic Revival style was frequently used for Episcopal and Catholic churches (note, for example, Christ Church Cathedral and St. Peter’s Church). Some Congregational churches were also built in that style, including the Asylum Hill Congregational Church, the only Gothic Congregational church in greater Hartford. which was built in 1865 and designed by Patrick Keely. A noted architect of Catholic churches, Keely would later design Hartford’s St. Joseph’s Cathedral, which was destroyed by fire in 1956.

The Asylum Hill Church’s first pastor was Joseph Twitchell, who was a good friend of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens). The Clemens family rented a pew in the church. Today the church is also known for its yearly Boar’s Head and Yule Log Festival.

Christ Church Cathedral (1828)

Hartford’s fist Episcopal church was completed in 1795 and looked very similar to contemporary white Congregational meeting houses. Following the disestablishment of the Congregational Church as the official church of Connecticut in 1818 and the growth of the original Episcopal congregation, it was apparent by the 1820s that a larger building should be built. When Christ Church’s rector, Rev. Nathaniel S. Wheaton, was on a trip to England collect books for the Episcopalians’ new Washington College (now Trinity College), he sketched many of the Gothic churches there and, on his return, noted New Haven architect Ithiel Town was hired to design the new church in a Gothic Revival style. Town had previously designed Trinity Church on New Haven Green.

Christ Church was built in 1828 and consecrated in 1829. While the church’s overall shape still resembles a meeting house, by choosing a Gothic style the Connecticut Episcopalians were announcing their separate identity from the Congregationalists by linking themselves to the Anglican tradition. Various alterations have been made over the years by a number of noted architects. In 1919, the church was chosen to be the Cathedral of the Diocese of Connecticut. As the Cathedral is currently covered in scaffolding, the photo above focuses on the Bell Tower, which was added in 1838.

EDIT (5/30/08): I have replaced the original picture with a new one. There is still scaffolding, but more of the church is visible than in the first picture.

South Church, Hartford (1827)

The organization of Hartford’s Second Congregational Church occurred in 1670, after years of doctrinal disputes in the Hartford Church following the death of Thomas Hooker in 1647. After the division, the new congregation built its first meeting house in 1673, later replaced by its second in 1754. The current South Congregational Church on Main Street has a similar Federal style design to that of Center Church, also displaying the influence of James Gibbs, but here the spire is less elaborate, reflecting the popularity of the simpler Greek Revival style at the time it was built. The church is also unusual in having just a single row of windows on its side elevations. An article in the Hartford Courant noted the congregation’s 335th anniversary in 2005. Update 3/8/2012: Added new picture above. The old is here: (more…)

Center Church, Hartford (1807)

Having focused on houses for the last two weeks, HBCT now begins a week-long chronological survey of some nineteenth century churches in Hartford. These churches display the religious history and changing architectural styles of the period.

First up is Center Church, on Main Street. Built in 1807, it is the fourth meetinghouse building of the First Congregational Society. The Socirty was founded in Cambridge, Mass. in 1632 and was led to the west bank of the Connecticut River by its first minister, Rev. Thomas Hooker, in 1636. The town they founded was named Hartford, after Hertford in England. There was no separation of church and state at that time under the Puritan founders, so the church and government met in one and the same building. The first small meetinghouse was located near the current site of the Old State House, and it was there, in 1638, that representatives from the three original river towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfiled drew up the world’s first written constitution to create a government, the Fundamental Orders, adopted in 1639.

The second meeting house replaced the original log structure in 1641. For the third meeting house, in 1741, construction was moved down the street to the current location at Gold Street, on a corner of the Ancient Burying Ground. The fourth and final building was completed in 1807. By that time, church and government were using separate structures, hence the Old State House having been built at the site of the old meeting house in 1796.

Center, or First, Church, has a distinctive “wedding cake” style steeple, said to have been designed by Daniel Wadsworth, founder of the Wadsworth Atheneum. The steeple shows the elaborate ornamentation favored in America in the early decades of the nineteenth centry (called the Federal style). Wadsworth’s design, which is heavy with columns, displays this style to the extreme. Such steeples show the Baroque influence of architect James Gibbs, whose books influenced the designs of countless New England Churches. Wadsworth was said to be strongly inspired by Gibbs’s famous St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London.

Today, Hartford’s Center Church fetures such later additions as five stained glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany. The restoration and preservation of this historic structure has been a concern lately, as shown in a recent editorial in the Hartford Courant. Update 3/8/2012: Added new picture above. The old is here: (more…)

Harriet Beecher Stowe House (1871)

Built on Forest Street in Hartford’s Nook Farm neighborhood in 1871 for a lawyer named Franklin Chamberlin, this house was bought two years later by Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She lived here with her husband, Calvin Stowe (a retired minister and professor) and two unmarried twin daughters, Hatty and Eliza. In 1878 she completed her last novel Poganuc People, based on her early years growing up in Litchfield. After Stowe died in 1896, the twins sold the house and it was later bought, in 1927, by Katharine Seymour Day (Stowe’s great-niece and the granddaughter of Isabella Beecher Hooker), who left it to become a museum. The house was restored in the 1960s and is open to the public as part of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.

Ellery Hills House (1840)

Built around 1840 for Ellery Hills, a manufacturer of shoes, this Greek Revival house, with an unusual elliptical portico, is a reminder of a time when many other such houses lined Main Street in Hartford in the mid-nineteenth century. Architectural details used on the facade of this house are featured in Chester Hills‘s Builder’s Guide, published in Hartford in 1834.

Day-Taylor House (1858)

Built in Hartford in 1858, this Italian villa is across Wethersfield Avenue from Armsmear. It was first bought by merchant Albert Day. Later owners included Mary Borden Munsill and Edwin Taylor. It had a notable restoration in 1979 and now serves as offices. A recent article discusses this house in relation to the ideas of Andrew Jackson Downing on the benefits of the Italian style.