Samuel Belcher

Ellington Congregational Church (1915)

Four church buildings have served the Ellington Congregational Church since it was established in 1733. The first two churches, built in 1738 or 1739 and 1805-1806 respectively, stood in the town park. The first faced South (now Main) Street and the second, designed and constructed by builder Samuel Belcher, faced the site of the current church. When a new church was completed, the second building was sold and moved to Rockville, where it served as an opera house. It burned down in 1941. The third building, designed by Augustus Truesdale of Rockville, was constructed in 1867-1868 on the site of the current church. The building was completely destroyed by fire on the night of October 3, 1914. At that time, the church bell was usually rung to sound the alarm that there was a fire in town, but with the church itself on fire, no one could climb the steeple to toll the bell and the church burned down. Work on the current church building commenced in 1915 and it was dedicated on August 17, 1916.

First Congregational Church of Old Lyme (1910)

Lyme’s First Ecclesiastical Society‘s first Meeting House was constructed in 1665-6 and the first minister was Moses Noyes. A second was built in 1689 and in 1738, both earlier structures were dismantled to build the even larger third Meeting House. All three were located on Johnny Cake Hill. When the third church was destroyed after being hit by lightning in 1815, the fourth Meeting House was built in 1816-17 on Lyme Street in Old Lyme. Its architect was Samuel Belcher, who also designed the John Sill and William Noyes houses on Lyme Street. The fourth Meeting House burned on July 3, 1907–the 92nd anniversary of the burning of the third meetinghouse. It was replaced in 1910 by the current Meeting House of the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, a replica of its predecessor. The American impressionist artists who frequented Lyme in the early twentieth century often painted the church, most notably Childe Hassam.

John Sill House (1817)

Located further south on Lyme Street in Old Lyme from the house of William Noyes, Jr. is a house built the same year (1817) and designed by the same architect (Samuel Belcher). The Federal style house, whose original carpenters were shipbuilders, was constructed for John Sill, a “customs runner” who secreted his smuggled goods in hidden closets in the house. With Sill’s arrest in 1820, the house was bought by William Noyes and in 1822 by Charles Johnson McCurdy, a Yale graduate, politician, ambassador and judge. In 1944, an extensive restoration was undertaken by owner C. Whitney Carpenter with the local architect, Robert I. Carter, who later bought the home. In 1983, the house was sold by Carter’s children to the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. It now houses offices and gallery space. More information can be found in this pdf file of River and Sound.

Florence Griswold House (1817)

This week we will look at some notable buildings on Lyme Street in Old Lyme. The most famous residence on the street is the Florence Griswold House. Originally built in 1817 for William Noyes, Jr., a son of Judge William Noyes, the house was designed by Hartford builder Samuel Belcher, who was already at work on Old Lyme’s Congregational Church. In 1839, the house was sold to Richard Ely and in 1841 to the sea captain Robert Griswold. His daughter, Florence Griswold, was born in 1850. “Miss Florence” and her sister Adele inherited the house but, left in a precarious financial position, had to take in borders. In 1899, artist Henry Ward Ranger boarded at the house and soon encouraged other artists to stay there. In the following years, a number of notable American Impressionist painters made the home the center of an artist’s colony. The artists included Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Matilda Browne, William Robinson and many others. Several of the artists painted panels in the house’s dining room.

By the 1930s, Florence Griswold was in debt and her property was sold, although the land’s new owner, Judge Robert McCurdy Marsh, who built a new house, allowed her to live in the old house until her death in 1937. In 1941, the house was purchased by the Florence Griswold Association and opened as a museum in 1947. In recent years, the Florece Griswold Museum has expanded, with the gift of the Hartford Steam Boiler and Inspection Company’s art collection in 2001, the construction of the Krieble Gallery in 2002 and the 2005-2006 restoration of the house, which is furnished as it would have been in 1910 at the height of the art colony. Edit: I’ve replaced my earlier image of the house with a new one!