The Whitneyville Congregational Church, now the Whitneyville United Church of Christ, is a historic

Congregational Church Congregational churches (also Congregationalist churches or Congregationalism) are Protestant churches in the Calvinist tradition practising congregationalist church governance, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its ...

at 1247-1253 Whitney Avenue in the Whitneyville section of

Hamden, Connecticut Hamden is a town in New Haven County, Connecticut, United States. The town's nickname is "The Land of the Sleeping Giant". The population was 61,169 at the 2020 census. History The peaceful tribe of Quinnipiacs were the first residents of the ...

. The congregation is now affiliated with the

United Church of Christ The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in the United States, with historical and confessional roots in the Congregational, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Anabaptist traditions, and with approximately 4 ...

(UCC).Whitneyville United Church of Christ
website, accessed January 22, 2012. The church building is a Greek Revival style built in 1834, with an interior altered in 1866 to designs by Rufus G. Russell. The church, along with its 1924 parish house, was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1995 for its architecture.

Architecture and history

The Whitneyville Congregational Church stands in the Whitneyville village of southeastern Hamden, on the east side of Whitney Avenue just east of Ralston Avenue. It is a single-story frame structure, covered by a gabled roof and finished mainly in clapboards. The front facade resembles a Greek temple front, with square pilastered corners, entrances recessed behind fluted Doric columns, and a gable pediment whose tympanum is flushboarded. The corners of the entrance recess are also pilastered, giving the appearance of square columns set ''in antes''. The interior has a small vestibule area at the rear, and is otherwise a single large sanctuary chamber, with a gallery level supported by columns with Corinthian capitals. Just north of the church is its 1924 parish house, a Colonial Revival two-story brick building housing offices, classrooms, and a small auditorium. The church congregation was established in 1795, and built its first sanctuary in the Hamden Plains area. By 1833 the first church was too small, and the search began for land to build a larger structure. A gift of land from the Whitney family convinced the congregation to relocate to Whitneyville, then a community undergoing rapid growth due to the nearby Eli Whitney Gun Factory. The church was completed in 1834; its designer is not known. The interior underwent a Victorian restyling in 1866 under the auspices of Rufus G. Russell, a New Haven architect and protegé of Henry Austin.

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Church information
{{National Register of Historic Places Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut Churches completed in 1834 19th-century United Church of Christ church buildings United Church of Christ churches in Connecticut Churches in New Haven County, Connecticut Greek Revival church buildings in Connecticut Buildings and structures in Hamden, Connecticut National Register of Historic Places in New Haven County, Connecticut

Architecture and history

See also

References

External links