Progress on Trinity Episcopal Church

The article described the new Trinity Episcopal Church as a “rebuilding of the Unitarian church, now being pulled down on Asylum Street”.  This represents the earliest confirmation that I’ve found that Trinity Episcopal Parish had concluded its purchase of the Church of the Savior building.

On August 18, 1860, Trinity Episcopal Parish was negotiating to purchase the Church of the Savior building from Charter Oak Bank.

The cornerstone of the church will be laid on October 23, 1860.

The article, which described itself as a “very full record of the buildings now in progress in Hartford,” stated that the current construction activity equaled approximately $500,000.

“… it would cause wonder on the part of a man from the rurals, to see the limited amount of land in connection with many of them.  Yet these houses, with a stinted, stingy yard, cost enough to buy a large farm with good buildings, in many country towns.  The moral if this is, that those who are in these narrow, cabined, cribbed and confined dwelling places, had better go into the country; and those who are already in the country had better stay there.”

1. F. R. House was shown in an 1855 map of Hartford as owning a structure that probably occupied some or all of the future site of Asylum Hill Congregational Church.
2. $500,000 in 1860 is equivalent to $18,380,060.24 in 2023.

Unattributed.  “Building in Hartford,” Hartford Daily Courant, September 8, 1860, page 2.