First Congregational Church of Cromwell (1840)

Middletown’s Second or North Ecclesiastical Society was incorporated in 1703 in the community known as “Middletown Upper Houses,” now the Town of Cromwell. A minister was settled in 1715 and the congregation had their first meeting house on Pleasant Street. This was succeeded by a larger second meeting house, built in 1735-1736 on the town green. When Rev. Zebulon Crocker was pastor, the congregation undertook several ambitious building projects, constructing an Academy (1834), Parsonage (1835) and the third meeting house (1840), all designed in the Greek Revival style. The foundation stones of the church were dragged by volunteers across the ice on the Connecticut River from the Portland brownstone quarries. The architecture of the church was influenced by the Greek Revival of the old Middletown Court House, designed by Town and Davis. The upper tier of the steeple was lost in the 1938 hurricane and replaced in 1976.