Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Norwalk

Saint Mary Roman Catholic Church, Norwalk (1870)

Merry Christmas from Historic Buildings of Connecticut! Known as the Mother Church of Norwalk, Saint Mary Roman Catholic Church serves the second oldest parish in the Diocese of Bridgeport. The parish was founded by Norwalk’s Irish immigrants and the first St. Mary’s Church, located on Chapel Street, opposite Academy Street, was dedicated in 1851. The Irish community continued to grow and ground was broken in 1867 for a new and larger church. The basement chapel was dedicated the following year and the completed upper church was dedicated in 1870. Designed by James Murphy, the church, located at 669 West Avenue in Norwalk, recently underwent substantial renovations under the direction of Duncan Stroik, professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame.

Rowayton United Methodist Church (1868)

The first Methodist Church in Rowayton in Norwalk was formed in 1839 and originally met in a one room building until a new church edifice was built on the site in 1867 and dedicated in 1868. When first built the church was a white clapboard, wood frame structure. It was remodeled to its present form in 1907. The church is located at 5 Pennoyer Street, just off Rowayton Avenue. The street was named for Elias Pennoyer, who had donated the land for the church.

First Church of Christ, Scientist, Norwalk (1935)

Former First Church of Christ, Scientist, Norwalk

At 455 West Avenue in Norwalk, at the corner of Butler Street, is a former church that was later converted into a retail store. It was built as the First Church of Christ, Scientist. The first services were held in the building on October 28, 1935 and the church’s dedication services were held on December 29, 1935.

Hoyt’s Theatre (1892)

Hoyt’s Theatre is a former music hall at 130 Washington Street in South Norwalk. It was built by I. Mortimer Hoyt, father of Ira Ford Hoyt, who also became a theatrical manager. As related in an article in The Norwalk Hour of February 3, 1922 (“Early Theatrical Days in Norwalk”):

Mr. Hoyt was manager for fourteen years of old Music hall . . . There came a day when he realized that a playhouse, in order to achieve a full measure of success, should be on the ground floor, easy of ingress and egress. The experience of getting scenery in and out of Music hall, frequently through third-story windows; the limited stage room for the production of some of the plays of that day; the two long flights of stairs leading to the auditorium, and still another flight to the gallery, were some of the difficulties Mr. Hoyt had to contend with. In 1890, after prolonged negotiations with the Marvin brothers for the land, he began the erection of Hoyt’s theater, which was formally opened in 1892, with Oliver Dowd Byron in “Across the Continent” as the attraction.

The theatre was first listed in the city directory in 1893 and by 1923 it was listed as the Rialto Theatre, operated by Warner Brothers as a movie house. The interior was remodeled in the Art Deco style in 1941. The theatre closed c. 1959-1961 and has since contained other businesses on the first floor with condominiums above. (more…)

First United Methodist Church, Norwalk (1898)

Methodism first came to Norwalk in the 1780s. The first Methodist church building in town was constructed in South Norwalk in 1816. A new church was built in 1843 and enlarged thirteen years later. Two years later, the congregation divided with the formation of a new Methodist Church in Central Norwalk. In 1898 the congregation of Norwalk’s First United Methodist Church moved into another new church at 39 West Avenue. The cornerstone of the yellow brick and white marble building, designed by architect M. H. Hubbard of Utica, New York, was laid 11 June 1897. It was completed the following year. The church was deconsecrated on Sunday, May 25, 2008 due to declining attendance and for a time the building was on and off the commercial real estate market. Macedonia Church recently purchased the building. (more…)

Keeler-Pratt House (1750)

The sign on the house at 114 Perry Avenue, in the Silvermine section of Norwalk, identifies it as the Ralph Keeler House, built c. 1750. The Keelers were one of the founding families of Norwalk. Also known as the Isaac Camp property, the house has elsewhere been dated to c. 1778. Verneur E. Pratt (1891-1966) moved to Norwalk in the late 1920s and lived in the house. An inventor and entrepreneur, Verneur Pratt converted the adjacent carriage barn (116 Perry Avenue, built c. 1800) into a laboratory in the late 1930s. Pratt invented the Optigraph Reading Machine, an early microfilm reader.

Governor Fitch Law Office (1740)

Thomas Fitch (1696-1774), a lawyer, was Governor of the Colony of Connecticut from 1754 to 1766. His house, built around 1740, once stood on Earls Hill on the east side of East Avenue in Norwalk. The house was partially burned in the British raid on Norwalk on July 11-12, 1779. Fitch descendants occupied the reconstructed house until 1945. The section of the house that had survived the British raid (part of the house’s kitchen wing) was moved to Mill Hill in 1956 when the rest of the building was demolished to make way for the construction of the Connecticut Turnpike (now I-95). In 1971 the building was restored as a museum to resemble a law office such as one that Governor Fitch might have used in the eighteenth century. The foundations and chimney of the Law Office were constructed using stones from the cellar walls of the original Fitch House. The Law Office is one of three buildings at Mill Hill Historic Park maintained by the Norwalk Historical Society and the Norwalk-Village Green Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.