Congregational Church of West Hartford

## History

### **First Church**

In 1712, the people of West Hartford constructed their first "meeting-house" at the northwest corner of Farmington Avenue and South Main Street. It was a very plain, moderate-sized structure, with a steep roof and without steeple or tower, in accord with the general character of the church buildings in New England communities at that time. Located on the Pantry Lot in the central part of the West Division, the church organization was founded on February 24, 1713, with 29 members. It was called the Fourth Church of Christ in Hartford; it is now known as the First Church of Christ in West Hartford. That same day, the church ordained the first pastor, Benjamin Colton, an alumnus of Yale College. He served for 46 years, long enough to baptize Noah Webster in 1758.

### **Second Church**

Within thirty years after the foundation of the First Church in 1712, the first building became too small and seemed antique. A more refined taste favored an oblong edifice with a tower, spire, and bell. In December 1741, the people voted its dimensions, levied a tax, and elected a committee to spend it. The second building stood a little north of the first one, on the present center park on the northwest corner of the intersection. The interior had three aisles, the central one leading to a high pulpit on the long side opposite the broad entrance. Built in 1742-44, this second meeting house and church stood for about ninety years. In it the first three pastors preached; Noah Webster's father served as a deacon there as well. It was also there that on June 2, 1775, Pastor Nathan Perkins preached a patriotic sermon to soldiers about to march away for service in the Revolutionary Army.

### **Third Church**

After three generations, the second meeting house (b. 1742-44) was decrepit and too small. It was also unfashionable when the Greek revival in architecture was covering the country with imitations of ancient temples. In January 1834, a special meeting voted 45 to 21 for a new building, and entrusted all business tFo a committee, which proceeded with traditional care. After viewing several meeting houses built in nearby towns, they ordered one strikingly similar to one still standing in Bristol - a white wooden temple facing east with a three-story bell tower over a portico with massive Doric pillars. Three doors opened into a spacious vestibule with stairs to the galleries. It was a stately edifice for a country parish, and the people were proud of it. Mark Gridley planted a line of old maple trees along its enclosure in 1834. But fickle architectural taste changed again, and in 1882, the congregation moved to its fourth building on the southeast corner of the intersection.

The Third Church (b. 1834) became the new town hall for West Hartford in that year of 1882 and the bell tower was reduced to a stump with a flag pole. The original enclosure on the south and east side by an ornamental fence was removed. The front portico often displayed posters proclaiming concerts, plays, and civic meetings.

### **Fourth Church**

The congregation moved to its fourth building on the southeast corner of the intersection in 1882. The fourth meeting house was a Gothic church of cut gray granite, with rose windows, and a slender spire which later became unsafe and was amputated. Attached parish rooms proclaimed the new liberal Protestant favor toward social and educational activities.

The annual meeting of the church on January 3, 1890 reported the treasurer and other officers.

The Gothic church on the southeast corner was destroyed by fire on a cold winter night in 1942 and was succeeded by the fifth and current nineteenth-century-type classical meeting house made of red brick with white trim and a soaring spire on South Main Street south of Farmington Avenue.

### **Fifth Church**

After the Greystone Church burned down in January 1942, members of the Congregational Church were temporarily offered the temple of Rabbi Feldman and the members of the Congregation Beth Israel without cost. Because it was war time, materials to build the new church were delayed until after the war. The fifth meeting house of the congregation was thus built and dedicated on September 21, 1947.