St. Peter Church, Torrington (1928)

St. Peter parish in Torrington was formed in 1907, when Bishop Michael A. Tierney named Father Joachim C. Martinez as pastor to the city’s Italian immigrants. Beginning in a basement chapel on Center Street, the parish later faced closure, but a parish committee successfully appealed for the restoration of a permanent pastor in 1914. The parish then expanded, building a new church at 107 East Main Street in 1927-1928 and opening a parish school in 1956, which combined with St. Francis School in 2005.

A Former Church on Market Street in Hartford (1855)

The only surviving nineteenth-century building on Market Street in Hartford is a former church building at no. 125. It was built in 1855 as St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, a mission to the immigrants who once lived on Hartford’s East Side. In 1880, it was sold and became the German Lutheran Church of the Reformation. In 1898, it became St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church, which served the neighborhood’s Italian-American population. In 1958, St. Anthony’s merged with St. Patrick’s Church and the former St. Anthony’s Church building became a Catholic information center. Today, it is used by Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services. The church no longer has its original steps up to what was once the front door.

At the church’s northeast corner is an eighteenth-century grave, protected by a deed restriction. As described in Commemorative Exercises of the First church of Christ in Hartford, at its Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary (1883), “The monument of Dr. Norman Morison, who died in 1761, and was buried in his own garden, still stands in front of St. Paul’s church on Market street, with that of another of his family.” Dr. Norman Morrison (1690-1761) had a property that stretched to Main Street. His house there was later moved to Trumbull Street.

St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church, Chester (1891)

The first Catholic mass in Chester was held in 1851 and a church was built on Middlesex Ave in 1855. At that time, the Parish served the towns of Chester, Deep River, Essex, Old Saybrook, Westbrook, Old Lyme, Lyme, and Haddam. The Parish received a full-time pastor in 1876 and the current church replaced the original one on the same site in 1891. To make way for the new church, the first church building was sold and moved to the corner of Main Street and Middlesex Avenue. The new St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church was dedicated on February 16, 1892. The church was enlarged in 1929, at which time the peak of the gable roof was lowered and two smaller towers on the right of the front facade were removed.

St. Francis of Assisi Church, Torrington (1887)

As the Irish population of Torrington grew in the mid-nineteenth century, a wood frame Catholic church was built on Main Street in 1859. St. Francis of Assisi mission became a parish in 1874 and on November 13, 1887, a new Gothic-style St. Francis of Assisi Church, replacing the earlier wooden one, was both dedicated and consecrated on the same day, allegedly the first instance of this dual ecclesiastical honor in the nation.