St. Anne’s Church, Waterbury (1906)

St. Anne’s Parish in Waterbury was organized in 1886 to serve the city’s French and French-Canadian Catholics. The parish’s first church was built in 1888-1889 on Dover Street. In 1906, work began on a much larger church, with the exterior being completed in one year. In 1912, the basement was finished and used for services while the rest of the interior was being worked on. It took several years to accumulate the necessary funds and there was also a delay due to the First World War, but the finished church was dedicated in 1922. The Gothic-style church has a structure of steel and brick with an exterior of granite and Vermont blue marble. The church survived fires in 1971 and 1978 and work was also undertaken in 1979 to repair the two great spires and dome. These signature features continue to impress motorists traveling through Waterbury on I-84.

UPDATE: Sadly, the condition of the two towering spires continued to deteriorate and they were removed in August, 2019.

Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Waterbury (1909)

As described in the first volume of the History of Waterbury and the Naugatuck Valley (1918), “In the year 1899 the Italian Catholics of Waterbury were organized into Our Lady of Lourdes Parish by the Rev. Father Michael A. Karam, the first pastor, at the request of the Right Rev. Bishop Tierney.” The parish’s first chapel was later replaced with the current Our Lady of Lourdes Church on South Main Street, begun in 1903 and completed in 1909. It was modeled after the Roman church of Santa Francesca Romana. According to the History quoted above:

The church has a frontage of 70 feet on South Main Street and is 127 feet in depth. The height of the nave or body of the church is 55 feet, and the campanile or bell tower is 100 feet in height. The basement was first completed and roofed over, and used for a number of years for church services, and was occupied also while the super-structure was being built. The general plan consists of a high nave, lighted by clerestory windows, with two aisles. Each aisle terminates in a semi-circular apse in which the side altars are placed. The main altar is also placed in a large semi-circular apse, surrounded by an entablature and columns in which are arches and niches for the numerous statues with which the interior is adorned. The exterior of the church is built of gray pressed brick and trimmed with Indiana limestone and terra cotta. The main roofs are of slate. The campanile, which was afterwards destroyed, was built near the rear after the manner of Italian churches.

St. Patrick’s and St. Anthony’s Church (1876)

The first St. Patrick’s Church, serving the Irish-Catholic population of Hartford, was dedicated on Church Street in 1851, but was destroyed by fire in 1874. It was replaced by the current quarry-faced brownstone church, completed in 1876. A fire in 1956 gutted the interior of the church, which was restored, but the steeple was removed during the reconstruction. In 1958, St. Anthony’s Parish, dedicated in 1898, merged with St. Patrick’s Parish. St. Anthony’s had served the Italian community of Front Street, a neighborhood that had been demolished for the construction of Constitution Plaza. In 1990, the Franciscan Friars took over the leadership for the ministries of St. Patrick-St. Anthony Church and established the Franciscan Center for Urban Ministry. In 2000, new facilities for the Center were constructed on the grounds of the church.

The Basilica of the Immaculate Conception (1928)

 

 

We conclude Waterbury Week with the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. The first Roman Catholic church in Waterbury was St. Peter’s Chapel, purchased in 1847 from Episcopalians, who were at the time moving to a larger building. The Chapel was moved to the site on East Main Street where St. Patrick’s Hall would later be built. In 1857, across the street from the Chapel, the first church in Waterbury specifically built to be a Catholic Church, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, was dedicated. In 1925 to 1928, a new Immaculate Conception Church was built on Waterbury Green, on the site where the William B. Merriman House once stood. Designed by the firm of McGinnis and Walsh, the church was modeled on the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, one of the four major Catholic basilicas. A Vatican decree in 2008 conferred on Immaculate Conception Church the status of a minor basilica.

Cathedral of Saint Patrick, Norwich (1879)

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The Catholic Cathedral of Saint Patrick Parish, on Broadway in Norwich, was built during the 1870s. The new Cathedral was built because of the crowded conditions at Norwich’s first Catholic Church, St. Mary’s, which was built in 1845 and was the first Catholic Church in Connecticut on the East side of the Connecticut River. The Gothic-style Cathedral was designed by James Murphy of Providence, who was the brother-in-law of the famous church architect, Patrick Keely. The Cathedral was largely constructed by Norwich’s Irish residents. Ground breaking took place on Good Friday 1871 and the first mass was held in the completed building on St. Patrick’s Day, 1879. The Cathedral was extensively renovated in the 1950s.

St. Patrick’s Church, East Hampton (1897)

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St. Patrick’s Church in East Hampton began as the Mission of East Hampton in 1857, with the first church building being constructed in 1869. The current church, located half a mile east of the first building, was dedicated in 1897 and a rectory was built in 1901. Originally served by St. Mary’s Church in Portland, St. Patrick Parish was set apart from Portland in 1900.