National Register of Historic Places

Congregational Church of Plainville

Plainville, Hartford County, Connecticut
Listed
June 26, 2012
Type
Building
Period
Industrial
Ref No.
12000358

About this property

The Congregational Church of Plainville is a historic church building at 130 West Main Street in Plainville, Connecticut. Built in 1850, it is one Connecticut architect Henry Austin's significant church designs, exhibiting a mix of Carpenter Gothic and Romanesque features. It was built for a congregation formally organized in 1839 that is now affiliated with the United Church of Christ. The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. The Congregational Church of Plainville stands on the south side of West Main Street (Connecticut Route 372) at its junction with Church Street.The main church building is a single-story timber frame structure, covered with a steeply pitched gable roof. The exterior is finished in wooden clapboards, with wooden pseudo-buttresses at the corners and brackets in the roof eaves. The main facade has a 20th-century Colonial Revival entrance at its center, with flanking round-arch windows on either side, and a large six-part gable-arched window above. Each of these features is crowned by a hooded moulding. To the left of the main facade is a square tower, also finished in wooden clapboards, and with similarly decorated windows. Clocks are set on two of the tower faces in diamond-shaped surrounds. Above these is the belfry, with Gothic gabled louvers above. A cornice above the belfry is decorated with densely placed brackets, and the octagonal spire above has slender dormered windows on four faces. Plainville was a part of neighboring Farmington until 1869. Congregationalist residents of the area worshipped at Farmington's church from the period of the area's settlement in the 17th century until 1839, when a separate parish was formally established. Its first sanctuary was built at West Main and Canal Streets, and the present, larger edifice was built in 1850. It was designed by New Haven architect Henry Austin, a leading architect of the period in Connecticut. The building's use of both round-arch Romanesque windows and lance-arched Gothic windows illustrates a tension in church design at the time, in which some Congregationalist churches sought to differentiate themselves from the typically Gothic Roman Catholic buildings. National Register of Historic Places listings in Hartford County, Connecticut

Location

130 W. Main St.
Plainville, Hartford County, Connecticut
41.67168, -72.87371

Categories

ARCHITECTURE
National Register nomination ›
Sources

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Nearby Historic Sites

Norton, Charles H., House
Industrial
1 mi
Forestville Passenger Station
Industrial
1.2 mi
New Haven District Campground
Listed
1.3 mi
House at 1010 Shuttle Meadow Road
Pre Contact
1.9 mi
Bradley, Icabod, House
Industrial
2.2 mi

Questions about this property

When was Congregational Church of Plainville listed on the National Register?

Congregational Church of Plainville was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 26, 2012.

What type of historic resource is Congregational Church of Plainville?

Congregational Church of Plainville is classified as a building in the National Register of Historic Places.

What is the period of significance for Congregational Church of Plainville?

The period of significance for Congregational Church of Plainville is recorded as the industrial era.

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