Litchfield enquirer., 1857-09-03
Gbe &ittbdela Gnqu}rcr
Litohleld, Conn. Thursday, Sept 3, 1857
Church Architecture in New England


 Church Architecture in New England
 Twenty-Five years ago, traveller leaving New Haven for journey to the Canada Line, per ceived in every vii age. cheering and snbstan- tial feature of religious progress. The towns. generally built upon high hills, had placed in their cantres the hugo meeting-house, and gather ed about it the plain and substantial dwellings of the village. This meeting house was not with. out some architectural grace. The Puritans and their descendants followed to degree, the style of building in the North of England: aud the principal edifcs of the towns, with its high square tower and tall steeple, standing either at the corner, or immediately in front of rhe main structure. was by no means unsghty picture. place, stood forth an object of respect and honor, if not of striking beauty.
 One by one, these interesting mementoes of that peculiar people, who, from the rock of Plymouth, penetrated into the wilderness, and laid the foun. dation of those institutions which were to give tone to the politics and religion of the whole world, have passed away: inJeed, there are scarcely to be found ha!f.dozen of the original m-eiing.houses of l7OO in the whole of New England and if these exist, they finger in a mutilated condition, robbed of porch and steeple, or turned inside out, to make way for fiirbished and modernizei interior, bereft of all those gran ite-like features which once rcnec ted ffom pew to sounding.board.
 hara 4sStinn .i. mee.ing.house that stood only stone's throw from our gfand-mother's door--the square pews with unpainted doors and uncushion seats /; which hung on hinges that let them down with a clap when the congregation stood up-,he high pulpit with sounding-board overhead, rudely carved in imitation of oak and acorn. and which our boyish imagination always pictured as repre-. senting an inverted nest of some huge bird, which our grandparents had been familiar with-tbe high walls full of odd-shaped cracks, through which p0eped bits of tow, or half.devoured grain, which the rats had carried thither for winter stores, and which often in prayer.time, Git seem. cd as if such things always happened in prayer time.) would rattle down upon grandnother's hat, or uncle's already bald head, leaving a little pile Of oat chaff, or halfdevoured hickory nus-and well enough remember the half-supptcsscd laugh of cousin John, as he pointed to the tiny heap, which uncle Abran,, too reverent in his worship to remove, lef. remaining on his head until the prayer was completed.
 But the church is gone, and the race that fre- qnsnsed it. These were indeed a peculiar pec- ple." The fervor of their religious worship can be easily imagined, when we remember ,i1a. they came early on ths winter Sabbath mornings, and continued through the long service, in a building unknown to any artificial warmth, whose win dove rattled in the storm. often letting in the drifting snow or pelting sleet-,hs, they returned at night 10 dwellings five or ten miles distant, whose only idea of comfort consisted in huge fireplace, whose heat mostly escaped up the chimney.
 The cold, barn-Iike structures in which they worshipped, however fine in their exterior, were TO fit places for the more effeminate races who were to follow our grandparents. They were therefore razed to the ground. the arches of their windows becoming frontspiece for some wag- gish fellows barn, and the cornces of their doors the ornament of some back wood house or shed In their places were erected, (uniformly on some narrow back lot as far from the old site as possi- bls,) an abortion of architecture, which no lexi. cographer has yet had sufficient courage to dig nfy with name. Its sPire was fashioned after tl.e idea of huge eider-taP--its tower and belfrey representing an inverted milking.s,ool, over which, in tortuous course, climbed lightning. rod, spitisg with its tines miserable deformity of rooster or Ash, too uuev enly balanced even to point out the direction of the wind Even the musical old bell, which had proclaimed liberty to the people, was removed to back shed, and Ge- prived of its tongue, to give place to some mod ern improvement, with more vibration in its Aote, than the cracked institution which had dan- sled from the neck of our graudmo,her's COW, for ten years. The ceilings of these structures were sufficiently low to retain ,he heat, and the doors and windews tight enough to retain the smoke and sulphuret of hydrogeu which was generated kom the copkusd breath of s'e congregation.
 The pulpi, was placed on stills, the galleries juss under the caves, and the pews or slips in the form of tho vertebre of shark-perhaps. bes, said. shark wrong end foremost for to get into them and find your seat, was to perform the entire sides of circle.
 In place of the old clergyman in wig and gown. and often in buckskin gloves, came mem- sss 0f some new school, who, of course, was