St. Rose of Lima Church, Meriden (1859)

Meriden’s first Roman Catholic Mass was celebrated in 1843 or 1844 for the community’s growing Irish community. St. Rose of Lima became a parish in 1851. A new parish church, built on Center Street, was dedicated on July 31, 1859. The church‘s front facade once had a single steeple. It was later removed and replaced by the current facade, which has two matching towers. The church was formally consecrated in 1926. Since 1998, the parish has been staffed by by Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate Conception Province of St. Francis of Assisi.

St. Anne-Immaculate Conception Church (1926)

In October 1888, French Canadian Catholics in Hartford gathered to plan for their own ethnic parish in the city. St. Anne parish was established the following year. A wooden church was built in 1892-1893 on the corner of Park and Putnam Streets. A new church later replaced it, dedicated by Bishop John J. Nilan on July 11, 1926. The yellow brick Neo-Classical Revival church with asymmetrical towers was designed by Henry F. Ludorf, who also designed the Polish National Home in Hartford. In 2000, St. Anne parish merged with Immaculate Conception parish.

St. Patrick’s Church, Bridgeport (1913)

The first Catholic church to be built in the North End of Bridgeport was St. Patrick’s Church. It began with a basement church designed by James Murphy of Providence, RI. The cornerstone for the Upper Church, designed by Dwyer and McMahon of Hartford, was laid in 1910 and the Dedication Mass for the completed edifice was offered in November of 1913 (see pdf, page 4). St. Patrick’s Parish merged with St. Augustine’s Parish in 2011 to form the new Cathedral Parish.

St. Mary Church, Meriden (1912)

German Catholic immigrants settling in Meriden first attended Mass at St. Rose of Lima Church and later joined with French-Canadians to establish St. Laurent Church in 1880. A decade later, their numbers were large enough that an independent parish was organized. The first St. Mary parish church, built of wood on Church Street, was dedicated on December 6, 1891. Bishop John J. Nilan blessed the cornerstone of a new church on October 27, 1912 and dedicated the completed Gothic church on October 19, 1913. The church continues to have a German-American congregation residing in Meriden and other nearby towns. Its parishioners share their clergy with St. Joseph’s Church in Meriden. St. Mary School opened in 1894 and closed in 2006.

St. Anthony Church, Ansonia (1915)

Lithuanians in Ansonia sought to establish an ethnic parish when they incorporated a lodge of the Lithuanian Society of St. Anthony in 1907. Bishop John J. Nilan of the Diocese of Hartford rebuffed their request, insisting that the Lithuanians remain within Assumption parish. The Lithuanians began to build a church in 1912 without episcopal approval, hoping that the bishop would reverse his decision, but he maintained his previous position. In 1915, an appeal directly to Rome succeeded and St. Anthony parish was given sanction by the Pope to operate as an independent parish. St. Anthony’s Church was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day 1915 by Father Matthew Pankus of Bridgeport.

Update: In 2015, the church celebrated its 100th anniversary and then closed.

St. Augustine Cathedral (1868)

The first Catholic church in Fairfield County was Saint James the Apostle Church, a brick building built on the corner of Arch Street and Washington Avenue in Bridgeport in 1843. The church eventually became too crowded and the cornerstone of a new church was laid in 1866. Built of stone from the abandoned Pequonnock quarry in Black Rock, the new church, renamed Saint Augustine’s, was dedicated on on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1868. The church became the cathedral of the Diocese of Bridgeport, when that diocese was founded in 1953. The cathedral went through a major renovation in 2003-2004.

St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church, Hartford (1906)

Mentioned in Tour 8 of my new book, A Guide to Historic Hartford, Connecticut (which is now available on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader), is St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church, located at 7 Clark Street in Hartford. Originally serving Irish-Americans, St. Michael’s parish was created out of the northern portion of St. Anthony’s parish in 1900. That year, a basement chapel was dedicated, with the upper portion being dedicated in 1906. The Renaissance Revival-style church, designed by Irish American architect John J. Dwyer, today serves a predominantly African American and Latino congregation.