The building that is known today as North Branford Hall was erected c. 1876 as the town’s Center School (District #2). Located at 1675 Foxon Road in North Branford, it replaced an earlier school building on the site that had been moved there from across the street in 1866 when the Soldiers’ Monument was erected. After a new Center School was built in 1920, the 1876 building was acquired by the North Branford Civic Association. The former school, which has lost its original bell tower, would served for many years as Town Hall and later (until 2013) as a senior center. A rear addition was constructed in 1925. Last year, the building was completely renovated to become the new home of Totoket TV’s Community Media Center.
The Second Ecclesiastical Society of Branford, also called the North Society, was established in 1724. Work soon began on a meeting house, after a debate that considered three possible sites for the building. It was eventually decided to erect the edifice “on the knoll on the west side of the river, at the place near Samuel Harrison’s.” Work began in 1726 and it was finished in 1732 with the completion of the gallery. As related by Rev. Elijah C. Baldwin in his “Annals of North Branford,” as quoted in Vol. II of S. L. Rockey’s History of New Haven County, Connecticut (1892):
That meeting house had its location very near the present newer structure at the center. It stood and was used until after the present meeting house was finished. It is remembered by some persons now living. Its windows were small and diamond-shaped and numerous. It had doors on the east, west and south sides. The pulpit was high and shut-in galleries went around three sides, and they were quite high. The floor of the house was a step below the sills as you entered. Box pews for families covered the floor. Above the pulpit was hung a square, roof-like structure for a sounding board. In later years the bats had nests in this and occupied them with impunity, because of many years accumulation of dust and filth, that seemed out of the reach of all cleaning efforts that were made in those days. It was no uncommon thing for a bat to get loose during a service and go scooting through the house, to the manifest discomfort of many in the congregation.
The Second Society and Third (Northford) Society of Branford incorporated as the new town of North Branford in 1831. The first town election was held in the basement of the just completed Second Society’s second meeting house. As described in Rockey’s book:
The new meeting house was begun May 26th, 1830, six feet north of the old house, and was dedicated in April, 1831. In the winter of 1870-1, a pulpit recess was added and the house was thoroughly renovated. It has since been kept in good repair. The church property was further improved in the fall of 1886, when a neat frame Gothic chapel and parish house was built, near the main edifice. Its cost was about $2,000, which was largely the gift of Mrs. George Rose and Mrs. Lucretia Plant, assisted by others of the parish. This house was dedicated January 16th, 1887.
On February 1, 1908, the church burned down in a fire, although the 1887 Chapel was saved, thanks to a bucket brigade from the nearby river. A new North Branford Congregational Church edifice was built on the same site and has been in use since Easter, 1909. A parish house, containing the church school and fellowship hall, was erected in 1960, connecting the 1909 Sanctuary to the 1887 Chapel.
Travelers along the Old Post Road could once find accommodations at Josiah Fowler’s Tavern in Northford (current address 1710 Middletown Avenue). Fowler, who came to Northford in North Branford from Durham, built his tavern in 1776. The front entrance’s original five-pane colonial overlight survives as part of a later Federal doorway. Josiah Fowler‘s son, Maltby Fowler started Northford’s first industrial enterprise when he built a Button Shop in 1830.
