Congregational - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

First Congregational Church of Cromwell (1840)

Middletown’s Second or North Ecclesiastical Society was incorporated in 1703 in the community known as “Middletown Upper Houses,” now the Town of Cromwell. A minister was settled in 1715 and the congregation had their first meeting house on Pleasant Street. This was succeeded by a larger second meeting house, built in 1735-1736 on the town green. When Rev. Zebulon Crocker was pastor, the congregation undertook several ambitious building projects, constructing an Academy (1834), Parsonage (1835) and the third meeting house (1840), all designed in the Greek Revival style. The foundation stones of the church were dragged by volunteers across the ice on the Connecticut River from the Portland brownstone quarries. The architecture of the church was influenced by the Greek Revival of the old Middletown Court House, designed by Town and Davis. The upper tier of the steeple was lost in the 1938 hurricane and replaced in 1976. (more…)

First Congregational Church, Ansonia (1865)

Ansonia‘s First Congregational Church was founded in 1850 and a wood church was built in 1852. This burned in 1865, when a group of women were cleaning the church and a fire started in the flue of the furnace. It was replaced by the current Gothic church building on South Cliff Street, built of stone quarried in Seymour. Anson G. Phelps, who founded Ansonia, donated the land and funds to build the church, which has stained glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

First Congregational Church, New London (1850)

UPDATE (1/26/24): Sadly, the towering steeple and roof of the church collapsed on January 25, 2024 causing great damage to the building.

For Christmas we feature a church with a very long history! New London‘s First Congregational Church was originally formed in 1642 in Gloucester, on Cape Ann in Massachusetts, under the leadership of Rev. Richard Blinman. This congregation moved to the new town of Pequot, settled in 1646 and later renamed New London. The first house of worship in New London was a large barn, with a meeting house being constructed around 1655 and replaced by a new church in the early 1680s. The third church, built in 1698, was was struck by lightning in 1735. Building a replacement was considered, but arguments over where to construct it led to the decision to repair and enlarge the existing edifice. A new church was eventually built in 1786 on Zion’s Hill. This was replaced by the current granite church in 1850, designed in the Gothic style by the Prague-born, New York-based architect, Leopold Eidlitz. The bell was installed in 1876. Merry Christmas from Historic Buildings of Connecticut!

First Congregational Church of Darien (1837)

Congregational worship services in what is now the town of Darien were originally conducted in private homes starting in 1668. One such home was the Bates-Scofield House, now owned by the Darien Historical Society. At that time the community was still under the authority of the First Church in Stamford, but meetings for worship independent of Stamford began to be held in the 1730s. The Middlesex Ecclesiastical Society was officially organized in 1744, with its first minister, Moses Mather, who would remain in the pulpit for sixty-four years. The first meetinghouse was built in 1740 on the King’s Highway. Rev. Mather was a patriot during the Revolutionary War and, as described in Lossing’s Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution (1859), “On Sunday, the 22d of July [1781], the church was surrounded by a party of Tories, under Captain Frost, just as the congregation were singing the first tune. Dr. Mather and the men of the congregation were taken to the banks of the Sound, thrust into boats, and conveyed across to Lloyd’s Neck, on Long Island, whence they were carried to New York and placed in the Provost Jail. Some died there.” Rev. Mather and most of the prisoners were eventually released. Middlesex Parish, established in 1737, remained a part of the Town of Stamford until Darien became a separate town in 1820. A new and larger brick meetinghouse, was built adjacent to the original 1837 and a bell was installed in 1841. Additional church history can be read in a pdf file on the church website.

The Congregational Church of East Hampton (1948)

A succession of Congregational Church buildings have stood on the same spot in East Hampton. The congregation was established in 1746 as the Third Society of East Middletown (the Second Society was in Middle Haddam, now the Second Congregational Church of East Hampton). East Middletown later became Chatham, which later became the towns of Portland and East Hampton. The first church building was constructed in 1755 and the second a century later. This church was destroyed by fire in 1941 and the current church, built in the same Greek Revival style as its predecessor, was completed in 1948.

Second Congregational Church, East Hampton (1855)

The Second Congregational Church of East Hampton was organized in 1740. This church originally served the communities of both Middle Haddam (pdf) and Haddam Neck, but these separated in 1855, when the Second Congregational Church was built in Middle Haddam. The church was moved to its present site in 1864 and was completely rebuilt in 1877 in the High Victorian Gothic style, to a design by Henry Austin. Today, the church remains the most imposing and architecturally significant building in Middle Haddam.

Windsor Avenue Congregational Church (1871)

Faith Congregational Church, located on Main Street, across from Spring Grove Cemetery, in Hartford’s North End, was originally built as the Windsor Avenue Congregational Church in 1871. The Romanesque Revival and High Victorian Gothic style church was constructed by the Pavillion Congregational Society, organized in 1870. Among the church’s ministers was Charles E. Stowe, pastor from 1883 to 1890. Stowe was the son of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who attended church there regularly during her son’s ministry. Since 1953, the church has been the home of Faith Congregational Church, a congregation formed from a merger of Talcott Street Congregational Church and Mother Bethel Methodist Church. Talcott Street Congregational was Hartford’s first black church, founded by the African Religious Society in 1826. Members of the Society had become weary of being assigned seats in the rear of churches and wished to found a church where there would be no assigned seating. The church became an important institution for Hartford’s black community and a center for abolitionist activity. An early minister was James W.C. Pennington, who had escaped slavery in Maryland. Rev. Pennington feared being dragged back to slavery, until John Hooker, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s brother-in-law, purchased his freedom from the estate of his former owner. The African Religious Society also founded Hartford’s first black public school in 1829. Faith Congregational Church is a site on the Connecticut Freedom Trail.

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