Former Methodist Church, Unionville (1926)

In the early nineteenth century, Methodists in Unionville traveled to Burlington for services. Eventually they began to hold their own meetings in Unionville on the second floor of the Tryon and Sanford store at the intersection of Main and Lovely Streets. Unionville soon grew as a population center and a number of Methodists in Burlington eventually joined their coreligionists in Unionville to build a church on Farmington Avenue in 1867 (near the site that would later have a Friendly’s restaurant). By the 1920s, the Methodists had outgrown their church building and they erected a new one on School Street, on a site where the Solomon Richards Mansion, one of the grandest in Unionville, had been taken down in 1925. Completed the following year, the church, built by local builder John Knibbs, displays the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement. Sometimes called the “Stone Church,” it’s design was modeled on the Lake Mahopec Methodist Church in Mahopec, New York. In 1929 the church officially adopted the name of “Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church.” A parish hall to the rear was erected in 1959. Urban renewal in Unionville in the late 1960s provided the opportunity for the church, now called Memorial United Methodist Church, to relocate again, this time to West Avon Road in Avon. The former church in Unionville is now used by the Town of Farmington as a Youth Center.