St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, New Canaan (1833)

St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in New Canaan was originally built as St. Mark’s Episcopal Church. The Anglican church in New Canaan originally met in a building on West Road, deeded to “professors of the Church of England” by a wealthy landowner in 1764. This was replaced by a new Episcopal church, built in 1833-1834 on God’s Acre in the center of New Canaan. The church (it was initially painted brown, but later painted white), continued as an Episcopal church until the current St. Mark’s was built in 1959-1961 on Oenoke Ridge. In 1962, the old church was acquired by the Board of American Missions of the Augustana Lutheran Church for a new Lutheran mission congregation, organized the following year as St. Michael’s Lutheran Church. That same year, St. Michael’s gave the adjacent Ludlow House, which had been included with the church property, to the New Canaan Historical Society in exchange for nearly an acre of land to be used for additional parking.