St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Naugatuck (1875)

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church on the Green in Naugatuck is a High Victorian Gothic structure, built in 1875 and designed by David R. Brown, who had been an apprentice of Henry Austin. St. Michael’s Parish was formed in 1786 and a church was built in Millville in 1803. That structure was moved to what would become the center of town in 1832, to land donated by innkeeper Daniel Beecher, who also provided land next door for the Congregational Church and established Naugatuck’s Green, thereby providing the then dispersed communities of Naugatuck with an institutional center. The relocated original church was in use until 1875, when it was sold to the Naugatuck school board and removed to make way for the current church.

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. Luke’s Episcopal Church, South Glastonbury (1838)

In 1806, Episcopalians in Nayaug (South Glastonbury) established an Episcopal Society and built a church in 1812-13. The church was officially consecrated as St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in 1821 and served as a church until a new church was consecrated in 1838. The old church was sold and became a school. It was moved further down Main Street in 1860 and was torn down in 1933. The 1838 church is still in use, with few modern modifications to the original structure.

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, New Britain (1922)

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in New Britain began in 1836 and the first church building was located on East Main Street. This small wooden structure, later relocated to become St. Mary’s Schoolhouse, was succeeded by a more elaborate wood second church, built in 1848 on the corner of West Main and Washington Streets. Enlarged in 1859, it was replaced by the current granite church, built in 1921 and consecrated the following year. The church has stained glass windows that were originally in the second church building, as well as ones commissioned from the studio of William Morris.

Grace & St. Peters Episcopal Church, Hamden (1821)

The oldest church building in Hamden is Grace Episcopal Church, built in 1821 and attributed to the architect builder David Hoadley. The church’s first meeting house was built in 1790, in Mount Carmel, on what is today Whitney Avenue. The current church once had a large steeple, built in 1847 and designed by Henry Austin, which blew down in 1915. The present steeple was built in 1921. The church was moved in 1966 from one side of Dixwell Avenue to the opposite side. In the 1990s, Grace Church merged with St. Peter’s on the Hill, founded in 1958. The united church is now known as Grace & St. Peters Episcopal Church.

St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Milford (1851)

The first Anglican church in Milford, named St. George’s, was built from 1769 to 1772. The church was not consecrated, but rather “set apart” and dedicated for Divine Service in 1775, because Connecticut did not yet have a Bishop. In 1849, the original wooden church was demolished and replaced by the current brownstone church, designed by Frank Wills, a prominent architect and Gothic Revival churches and author of Ancient English Ecclesiastical Architecture and its Principles, Applied to the Wants of the Church at the Present Day (1850). The church was completed in 1851 and consecrated as St. Peter’s Church. The rededication of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in 1981 was followed by a disastrous flood in June 1982, after which the organ and parts of the church and parish hall had to be rebuilt.

Christ Episcopal Church, Stratford (1858)

Built in 1857-1858, the current Christ Episcopal Church in Stratford was preceded by two earlier church buildings. The first was built in 1724 and was replaced by the second, built in 1743, which stood just to the north of the current church, which was designed by architect Henry Dudley. Christ Church is the oldest parish of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut, tracing its origins to 1707. In 1972, the interior of the church was reconfigured to its present arrangement.