First Church Congregational, Fairfield (1892)

Fairfield‘s First Church Congregational has had six successive church buildings, the third having been destroyed when the British burned Fairfield in 1779 and the fifth burned down, apparently due to an arsonist, the night before Memorial Day in 1890. As described by Frank Samuel Child in An Old New England Church (1910):

The first Meeting-House was a small, rude building made of logs and rough hewn timbers, probably erected in 1640. Town meetings as well as church services were held in it. The second Meeting-House was built in 1765—a larger and more comfortable structure —a frame building forty feet square clapboarded, and a tower in the center of the roof. The third Meeting-House was reared in the year 1745—sixty feet in length, forty-four feet in breadth, twenty-six feet in height, with a spire one hundred and twenty feet. The Rev. Andrew Eliot called it an “elegant Meeting-House.” The fourth Meeting-House was modeled after the one destroyed in 1779. The congregation worshipped in it for the first time March 26th, 1786, but it was forty-two years before it was properly finished—a fact which suggests the slow recovery of the people from the losses of the American Revolution. A part of the funds came from the town and the confiscated property of traitors and a part from the subscriptions of the people. The Meeting-House erected in 1849 was the first one that came as the result of voluntary offerings. More than eight thousand dollars was raised for this Romanesque structure. The length of it was ninety-five feet and its breadth forty-seven. The spire extended to the height of one hundred and thirty feet. The seating capacity of this handsome Meeting-House was five hundred and fifty persons. The later changes adapted the structure to the needs of the day—a chapel being added during the pastorate of Dr. McLean and the church parlors when Dr. Bushnell was pastor.

The current church was completed in 1892 and has Tiffany windows.