New Britain - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

The Daniel Beadle Capron House (1850)

According to the 1867 history, by Alfred Andrews, of the First Congregational Church of New Britain, Daniel Beadle Capron was born in 1813 in Broadlebin, New York. Having moved to New Britain, “he has been a mechanic, but in 1862 was in merchandise on Washington st., and now, in 1867, in shoe and harness business on Main st.” Capron‘s Italianate-style house, built around 1850, originally stood on the corner of High and West Main Street, but was moved, in 1906, further down High Street to make way for the building of the First Baptist Church. The house later served as a funeral home, then the offices of an architectural firm and the city’s Health Department.

The Lines-Curtin House (1900)

On the corner of West Main and Cedar Streets in New Britain is a large Shingle style house, built around 1900 by Charles W. Lines, who ran a grist mill. Lines later moved to Newington and the house was purchased by John M. Curtin, partner in a furniture dealer and undertakers company. The house was the Curtin Funeral Home until the late 1960s and today is used as office space.

An advertisement in the Official Souvenir and Program of the Dedication of the Soldiers’ monument, New Britain, Conn., September 19, 1900.

Trinity United Methodist Church, New Britain (1891)

The earliest Methodist church in New Britain was built at the corner of Main and Walnut Streets in 1828, replaced by a larger building in 1854. This was in turn replaced by a new Trinity United Methodist Church, located on the east side of Main Street (and Chestnut Street). The new granite Richardsonian Romanesque church, designed by Amos P. Cutting of Worcester, was built in 1889-1891. By 2000, the congregation could not afford the costly repairs the building required and voted to demolish the church. Local citizens formed a committee to save the church, which has now become Trinity-on-Main, a non-profit art center, education facility, community space and venue for events.

Tephereth Israel Synagogue (1925)

Congregation Tephereth Israel in New Britain was formed in 1925 when orthodox Lithuanian immigrants withdrew from the conservative Temple B’nai Israel. The synagogue on Winter Street, which combines elements of the Romanesque and Colonial Revival styles, was built in 1925 to 1928 and was designed by Adolf Feinberg, an Austrian-born architect who arrived in the United States in 1921. Feinberg also designed Beth David Synagogue in West Hartford. Congregation Tephereth Israel, which today has a small membership, is undertaking a building repair program. For five decades, Rabbi Henry Okolica has been spiritual leader of the Orthodox synagogue, as well as serving as Jewish chaplain at Central Connecticut State University.

St Josaphat’s Ukrainian Catholic Church (1975)

In 1951, a time of Soviet persecution of Ukrainian Catholics in their homeland, Ukrainian exiles settling in the New Britain area founded Saint Josephat’s Ukrainian Catholic Parish. The growth of the parish led to the purchase, in 1955, of a former Assyrian Church on Beatty Street, soon enlarged with materials from a dismantled six-family building from East Hartford, that had been purchased by the parish. In 1966, a house was purchased on Eddy Glover Boulevard to become a rectory and, in 1974, there was a ground breaking on the same Boulevard for the building of a new church. The church was designed by the James P. Cassidy architectural firm of West Hartford and parishioners of St. Josephat’s provided most of the labor for its construction. Completed in 1975, the church has three gold and blue domes, copied from those in St. Sophia Church of Holy Wisdom in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. In 1985, St. Josaphat’s Ukrainian Catholic parish and St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox parish worked together in having a new section of Route 9 through New Britain named the Taras Shevchenko Expressway, in honor of the great Ukrainian poet. In 1991, the parish celebrated the independence of Ukraine from the old Soviet Union.

The Landers House (1910)

Landers, Frary & Clark, a New Britain company which manufactured cutlery, was founded in the 1850s by George M. Landers. The company (pdf) was known for such products as the Universal Food Chopper/Grinder. George M. Landers‘ son, Charles Smith Landers, married Grace Judd, the daughter of Loren F. Judd, of North & Judd, a company which manufactured saddlery hardware. Their son was also named George M. Landers. Grace Judd Landers later lived in a house which on Lexington Street in New Britain. It was built around 1910 for William H. Hart, president of Stanley Works, and sold to Mrs. Landers upon the death of Hart’s widow in 1929. It is located on the edge of Walnut Hill Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The style of the house combines elements of the Spanish Mission style (the use of stucco and stone and the Spanish style roofing tiles) and the Craftsman style (the gables and overhanging eaves with decorative brackets).

In 1935, Grace Judd Landers bequeathed the house to the the Art Museum of the New Britain Institute, now the New Britain Museum of American Art. The building was remodeled as an art museum based on designs by William F. Brooks, of the firm Davis & Brooks, and opened in 1937. In 2007, a new museum building was opened, connected to the Landers House, which has again been renovated and now houses an art lab, library and art studio.

Saint Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church (1911)

The origins of St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church in New Britain go back to the late nineteenth century (New Britain’s first Ukrainian immigrant arrived in 1889). Many of the Ukrainians who settled in New Britain and elsewhere in the United States (such as the coal regions of eastern Pennsylvania) were from Transcarpathia and Galicia. Transcarpathia is a region of the Carpathian mountains which includes parts of modern Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. Galicia (named after the city of Halych) is the western section of modern Ukraine. Early on, in New Britain, the Halychany (Galicians) attended Holy Trinity Byzantine Catholic Church, a Ruthenian Church, whose leadership and clergy were dominated by Carpatho-Rusyns, also known as Uhorsky Rusyny, or Rusyns (Ruthenians) who had been living in the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Hungarian rule. Conflicts between the two groups led to a riot in the church in 1908 and the decision of the Galicians the following year to form their own parish. Initially holding services in rented space in the basement of Sacred Heart Church on Broad Street, the new parish soon constructed St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church, on the corner of Winter and Clark Streets. It was built in two stages. The basement section, designed by the architects Unclebach and Perry, was dedicated in 1911. With the growth of the parish, the upper structure, designed by Clarence Palmer, was built in 1915-1917. The Eastern Basilica-style church was later repaired, after being damaged by a fire in 1973.