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Welcome back to Thursday Doors. Today. I am featuring one more church from Hartford, Connecticut’s Clay Hill area. As with the previous three posts, I am relying heavily on the nomination form from the effort to get this building listed in the National Registry of Historic Places (NRHP). Also, I want to let you all know that we are having some work done at our house, and I may not get to your posts until later than usual.
Union Baptist Church, originally known as the Memorial Church of Saint Thomas (Episcopal), is a small stone church built in 1871 in the Early English Gothic style. Located on Main Street in Hartford’s North End, a busy area mostly of multi-family dwellings, the church shares its lot at the northeast corner of Old North Cemetery with the parish hall and the parsonage. The hall is a one-story frame structure connected to the rear of the church, and the parsonage next door to the south is a 2 1/2-story brick house with a hipped roof, dormers, and projecting gabled bay in front. The hall was added in 1884 and the parsonage in 1894. The plan of the church includes a nave, side aisles, short transepts and an apse. There is a small projection, probably the sacristy, off the north transept. The church is oriented toward the east, and the entrance is on the south side, near the rear, where there is a small porch. The walls are a coursed ashlar of rough surfaced grey Westerly granite, with gables and buttresses coped with a similar but lighter and smoother stone. The main part of the church is divided by buttresses into three bays of 16′ each; it was planned to add another two bays, so the west wall was considered temporary and was made of brick. This plan was never realized. The slate-shingled gable roof has a very steep pitch which breaks somewhat over the aisles. The most serious alteration to the exterior was the destruction in the 1938 hurricane of the bell-cote. This was a buttressed extension of the wall at the east end of the nave to form a steep gable which was pierced by two openings for bells (never hung); only the very lowest part of the bell-cote remains. Some cresting was also blown off the roof of the apse.
National Registry of Historic Places Nomination Form
The plan of the church includes a nave, side aisles, short transepts and an apse. There is a small projection, probably the sacristy, off the north transept. The church is oriented toward the east, and the entrance is on the south side, near the rear, where there is a small porch. The walls are a coursed ashlar of rough surfaced grey Westerly granite, with gables and buttresses coped with a similar but lighter and smoother stone. The main part of the church is divided by buttresses into three bays of 16′ each; it was planned to add another two bays, so the west wall was considered temporary and was made of brick. This plan was never realized. The slate-shingled gable roof has a very steep pitch which breaks somewhat over the aisles. The most serious alteration to the exterior was the destruction in the 1938 hurricane of the bell-cote. This was a buttressed extension of the wall at the east end of the nave to form a steep gable which was pierced by two openings for bells (never hung); only the very lowest part of the bell-cote remains. Some cresting was also blown off the roof of the apse.
National Registry of Historic Places Nomination Form
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