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50 Bloomfield Avenue, Hartford, CT 06105
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Reverend Barbara Jamestone, PhD
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Begin Articlewhich were sufficient to pay off all the Society's debts and leave a balance of approximately $20,000. Two years later the bank sold the building to a new Episcopalian congregation, which dismantled and moved it to 122 Sigourney Street in the city's Asylum Hill neighborhood, where it was reconstructed as Trinity Church. [1]
Between 1857 and 1877, the church had no regular services or resident pastor, but did conduct annual business meetings and occasional religious services in public halls. By the end of the Civil War in 1865, the trustees' astute investments had produced a balance of over $31,000; by 1872, the total was $50,000. [2]
In 1877, with assets approaching $70,000, a new effort was made to revive the Society. Services were at first held in Roberts' Opera House, then moved to the Representatives' Hall of the Old State House, and finally to a section of the Cheney Building. Construction of a church building was begun in the late spring of 1880 and, on April 3, 1881, Unity Church on Pratt Street was formally dedicated. [3] The plain, red-brick Romanesque structure with a square tower over the front entrance seated approximately 700 people; better known as Unity Hall, it doubled during the next four decades as one of Hartford's leading concert and lecture halls. [4]
Unity Hall, Pratt Street,
Hartford, CT (1881-1924)The Unity Church building was sold in 1917, although the Society continued to hold services there until 1924 (when it was finally razed). During that interval, there was much discussion among the ==>
Footnotes
[1]. That building was demolished in 1892 and replaced by the present structure in 1898 (Andrews and Ransom, Structures and Styles, 150).
[2]. Meyer, 19.
[3]. Meyer, 20.
[4]. The St. Cecilia Club gave concerts at Unity Hall two or three times a year; the well-known contralto Ruth Thayer Burnham gave a series of lecture recitals there in 1897; the pianist Franz Xaver Scharwenka gave "a brilliant program" on March 23, 1891 and again on April 3, 1894; Polish virtuoso Ignace Paderewski played at Unity Hall on Feb. 8, 1892, less than a year after his American début at New York's Carnegie Hall; the Musical Club of Hartford gave semi-yearly concerts there beginning in 1893; Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Arthur Nikisch played the piano with the Kneisel Quartet for a Memnon Club concert; Helen Keller lectured around 1901; the celebrated German pianist Adele aus der Ohe played on March 30, 1887; the noted American composer and pianist Edward McDowell made his only Hartford appearance there on March 11, 1898; and the French baritone Charles Gilbert sang recitals in both 1898 and 1899. Johnson, Musical Memories of Hartford, 83-4, 96, 212-3, 221, 230, 247, 257, 269, 273, passim.
Let us know of any comments, errors and corrections - thanks (prepared 6/25/02)
