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50 Bloomfield Avenue, Hartford, CT 06105
Tel: (860) 233-9897 / FAX 233-1333
Email: firstunitarian@ushartford.com
Reverend Barbara Jamestone, PhD
Trinity College
Victor Lundy's Unitarian Meeting House,
Hartford, ConnecticutW. Robert Chapman
AMST 811-01
August 1995Foreward
This paper, which primarily discusses the architecture of the present Unitarian Meeting House at 50 Bloomfield Avenue in Hartford's northwest corner, is a logical continuation of my historical investigation of Hartford Unitarianism. This larger study began in 1990-91 when I wrote my senior honors thesis at Trinity College on the early nineteenth-century Unitarian challenge to the Connecticut "Standing Order." In that paper I included (as an appendix) a survey of Connecticut's religious history to 1818, which also contained details about each of the six Unitarian societies founded in the state between 1820 and the beginning of the Civil War, including the Hartford society.
While editing Hartford Unitarianism, 1844-1994 (1994) I built on this research, adding numerous historical details. The chapter that includes a sketchy description of the planning and construction of the present Meeting House is my original work, and I researched many of the details in the book relating to the other three buildings that have housed the Society during its one hundred fifty-one years in the city.
It is important to note that until 1818, when Connecticut adopted a new constitution that effectively disestablished the Congregational Church, [1] a rarely enforced statute existed that made felons of anyone practicing Unitarianism. [2] Although there were "heresy" trials in Mansfield (1805) and Coventry (1811) involving Congregational pastors accused of anti-Trinitarianism, [3] and an uncle of the Rev. William Ellery Channing [4] was dismissed in 1806 from his New London pulpit because of alleged Unitarian leanings, [5] it was not until 1821 that dissident members of the First Ecclesiastical Society of Brooklyn were able to legally separate from their orthodox brethren and establish the first Unitarian church in the state. [6] In 1823 the Rev. Samuel Joseph May, who would later play a key role in introducing Unitarianism to Hartford, was called to Brooklyn, becoming the first Unitarian minister called to a church in Connecticut. [7]
This paper surveys the history of Hartford Unitarianism, including brief descriptions of the three earlier buildings that housed the First Unitarian Congregational Society of Hartford between 1846 and 1963. The bulk of the paper, however, is devoted to the present church building. This 25,000 square-foot edifice was designed by Victor A. Lundy and dedicated in December 1964. I describe the building in detail and discuss its genesis and planning, construction, and subsequent problems. I also discuss some of Lundy's other ecclesiastical structures.
I am indebted to Margaret Sax, whose timely organization of the Society's archives made it possible for me to examine heretofore inaccessible documents relating to the building's design and construction. I would also like to thank Roy Cook, a church member and vice-president of the Farmington architectural firm of Russell Gibson Von Dohlen, for his careful reading of a draft of this paper and his cogent suggestions for its improvement.
The strikingly modern concrete and wooden structure at 50 Bloomfield Avenue that has housed the Unitarian Society of Hartford since 1964 is the fourth meeting house built and occupied by the church in its 151-year history. Variously described as a "spider's web" or a "space ship," the building's twelve reinforced-concrete piers "grow out of the ground and leap up to become cantilever supports for the sanctuary roof," according to its architect, Victor Lundy. [8]
The 350-seat sanctuary in the center of the main floor is surrounded by a 360-degree ambulatory, classrooms, offices, lobby, library, and a chapel behind the altar. The Payson Miller Chapel has a large window that allows nature to be quietly reflected upon. The concrete piers serve as partitions between classrooms and provide support for the steel bridge cables that support the sweeping, cedar plank roof. [9] The roof over the sanctuary was designed to be lower than the one over the classrooms. Between the two roofs is a clerestory window that allows light into both the sanctuary and classrooms. The sanctuary houses an Austin pipe organ in the choir loft, and the tent-like wooden ceiling evokes the rays of the sun.
The acoustical properties of the sanctuary are lively, lending themselves well to performances of chamber music and leading, over the years, to a symbiotic relationship between the Society and
Unitarian Society of Hartford, Exterior View from Bloomfield Ave.
Interior view of Sanctuary showing altar and ceiling
the Hartt School at the nearby University of Hartford: faculty and student recitals frequently take place at the Meeting House, often ==>
Footnotes
[1]. Between 1647, when Windsor residents signed the "Windsor Creed-Covenant," until 1818, when the State of Connecticut adopted a new constitution, it was the practice of each town to be responsible for supporting the ordained Puritan (i.e., Congregational) minister(s) within its borders. Originally, each town organized a religious society, which in turn provided financial support for a church. While only baptized adult males were eligible for voting membership in the church, every adult in the community was required to pay taxes to support the society. As Connecticut (and New England) became more religiously diverse, however, arrangements were made to accommodate Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, etc., by allowing them to stop supporting the local Congregational society if they could obtain a certificate proving that they were supporting another church. This practice persisted until 1818, when the new constitution failed to provide any special privileges for Congregationalism, thus opening the way for completely voluntary support for all Christian sects (and, later, other religions).
[2]. Unitarianism is among the most liberal forms of Protestantism (cf. Quakerism, Universalism). Although its theological origins can be traced to the Arianism of the Early Church, modern Unitarianism is a product of the anti-Trinitarian movement in sixteenth-century Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania that later found its way to England and America. American Unitarianism began with opposition to the Great Awakening among those eighteenth-century Massachusetts Congregationalist clergy who were inclined toward an Arminian interpretation of the relationship between the divine and the human (i.e., who affirmed some role for human choice in the process of salvation). Although its name implies only a rejection of Trinitarianism, contemporary American Unitarianism is essentially "the impulse to reject dogma in favor of free inquiry; to bring to bear the forces of reason in making religious judgments, while not necessarily denying the reality of supernatural forces; to be suspicious of religious authority that conflicts with individual reason; to replace a preoccupation with the metaphysical aspects of theology with an orientation toward living rightly and doing good in this world; and to exhibit an optimistic stance toward the possibilities of transforming the world into a saner and more humane place through the development of human potential by education, self-cultivation, and a beneficent social environment." Williams, "Unitarianism and Universalism," 579.
[3]. Chapman, "`One God in One Person Only,'" 10-93, passim.
[4]. The Rev. William Ellery Channing (1780-1842), pastor of Boston's Federal Street Church between 1803 and 1842, was widely regarded as the spiritual leader of nascent American Unitarianism. Channing's 1819 sermon "Unitarian Christianity" succinctly stated the beliefs of his liberal colleagues who rejected Calvinism--which argues that man has no choice in his salvation since God arbitrarily chooses whom to save and whom to damn--in favor of Arminianism (see note 2); they also rejected the fourth-century conciliar Doctrine of the Trinity, which declares that the Godhead consists of three distinct "Persons" (i.e., Father, Son, Holy Spirit). More than any other single document, "Unitarian Christianity" led to the schism, in 1825, of New England Congregationalism into competing Unitarian and orthodox factions, with the founding of the American Unitarian Association. In 1961 the American Unitarian Association merged with the Universalist Church of America to form the Unitarian Universalist Association of North America.
[5]. Chapman, 7-9.
[6]. Between 1813 and 1817, a schism occurred in the eastern Connecticut town of Brooklyn that pitted supporters of the senior minister, Dr. Josiah Whitney, against the junior pastor, the Rev. Luther Willson, who openly rejected the Doctrine of the Trinity. By 1821 the Brooklyn congregation had split into rival Unitarian and orthodox (i.e., Trinitarian) religious societies, with the former acquiring the Society's property.
[7]. Rev. May was settled as pastor of the Brooklyn church on Nov. 5, 1823, and served until 1836. An early agent for the American Unitarian Association who set about planting the seeds of Unitarianism in the Northeast, largely through the distribution of religious tracts and books, Rev. May would later become nationally known as an abolitionist and advocate for American Indian reform. In 1833 Rev. May was the only clergyman to publicly support Prudence Crandall, a Quaker schoolmistress, who had set up a short-lived school in nearby Canterbury that admitted Negro girls. When the Connecticut General Assembly enacted legislation outlawing such schools, Crandall openly violated the law, was tried, convicted, and jailed.
[8]. Unitarian Society of Hartford, Profile.
[9]. Lundy had previously used steel cables in a church building, at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Sarasota, FL (1960). Working within tight budgetary restrictions, the plan is "straightforward, and the congregation faces a barren, concrete wall. The pulpit and chancel are finished cleanly, with severely minimal furnishing and accoutrements. Dramatic contrast between bright light at the ends of the church and relative darkness in the central portion adds more drama to the building...contrasting sharply with the starkness of the detailing" (Chang, Ching-Yu, "Lundy, Victor A[lfred]," in Emanuel, Contemporary Architects, 489).
Let us know of any comments, errors and corrections - thanks prepared (6/25/02 )
