Adjacent to the Center Congregational Church in Manchester is the town’s Municipal Building. The brick and limestone building was constructed in 1926 and is typical of the colonial revival civic architecture of its era.
In 1772, the Ecclesiastical Society of Orford was established, in what would later become the town of Manchester. Owing to the unsettled conditions at the time of the Revolutionary War, it took twenty years for a Congregational meeting house to be built, although the congregation used the unfinished building for worship, starting in 1779, before it was finally completed in 1794. This first church building, which stood about 130 feet east of the present Center Church, was replaced by a new structure in 1826 on the same location. The building was raised up in 1840 so that a basement could be added below. The basement was then rented to the town for the transaction of public business. In 1878, the church’s steeple blew off and crashed through the roof. It was then sold to the town and a new church was built the following year in the Gothic style. The current church, now known as Center Congregational Church, was built in 1904 in the Colonial Revival style. The neighboring brick parish house was added in 1930 and the Simpson Educational Wing in 1957.
The Methodist Church in Manchester began with a sermon preached in the spring of 1790 by the Rev. George Roberts in the home of Thomas Spencer. Rev. Roberts was an assistant of the Rev. Jesse Lee, who had preached the first Methodist sermon in Connecticut in Norwalk on June 7th, 1789. A Methodist Society in Manchester was soon organized and the first church building was constructed in 1794. In 1822, a new building was built at the corner of Center and Main Streets, now the site of a Masonic Temple. In 1851, the expanding congregation decided to divide into two congregations. The North Methodist Episcopal Church was built in 1851 on North Main Street and, after receiving a hundred new members, a new South Church was built in 1854 at the corner of Main Street and Hartford Road. This church was enlarged in 1891 and replaced by the current church in 1925. It was designed in a Tudor Gothic style by architect Arthur Eaton Hill of Providence, Rhode Island, who died before it was completed. In 1958, the church acquired the estate of Frank Cheney, Jr., located across Hartford Road.
This is the first building to be featured here which is likely not to exist very soon. John Olds is one of the founders of Manchester, who led the people of Orford parish in their quest to seperate from East Hartford in 1823, but his Revolutionary War-era house is in danger of being demolished very soon. The property, on Tolland Turnpike and Slater Road, is owned by TGM Associates, a New York developer. They own the nearby Waterford Commons apartments and hope to develop the land where the Olds House currently sits. Attempts to save the house by the town and historical society have not succeeded, so the house may soon be demolished.
Update: Although there were attempts to save it, the John Olds House was dismantled in 2012.
The home of Frank D. Cheney, of the Cheney family of silk manufacturers, is a 1902 Colonial Revival building that faces the Great Lawn in Manchester. Frank D. Cheney was the brother of Horace B. Cheney and Howell Cheney, whose houses are on either side of their brother’s mansion on Forest Street.
The Howell Cheney House is one of the mansions of the Cheney family of silk manufacturers in Manchester. Built in 1901, the house has a Forest Street address and is visible from both that street and across the Great Lawn from Hartford Road. The red brick Howell Cheney House is a Colonial Revival building, similar to the nearby Philip Cheney House, but not as symmetrical. Howell Cheney, who would serve as secretary and director of the family firm, was strongly interested in education, particularly vocational education. In 1915, he founded the Howell Cheney Technical High School in Manchester. Howell Cheney’s house is near to those of two of his brothers, Frank D Cheney and Horace Cheney. The house is currently for sale and is featured in a video on YouTube.
One of the Manchester mansions of the Cheney family of Silk Manufacturers, the Horace B. Cheney House was built in the mid-1890s. It has a Forest Street address and is also adjacent to the “Great Lawn,” where many of the mansion are located. Horace B. Cheney was the son of Frank Woodbridge Cheney and Mary Bushnell Cheney, the daughter of Horace Bushnell. His brothers were Ward, Howell, Austin and Frank D. Cheney.
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