Upriver History: The 1842 church that made Somers Center the center of town
Its builders told the architect to copy two other churches, and the steeple still anchors the historic district.
SOMERS - When the Congregational society built a new meetinghouse on Main Street in 1842, it settled where the center of Somers would be, according to the Somers Historic District's National Register nomination.
The previous meetinghouse stood farther north. Placing the new church at the crossroads near the Somers Inn "confirmed the area as the center of town," the nomination says, because both Sunday services and town meetings were held in the church.
The nomination calls the church the district's most outstanding Greek Revival building, citing its Ionic portico, large proportions and two-stage tower. Its builders were not after originality. The building committee told the architect, Daniel Colton of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, to copy the columns of the East Hartford meetinghouse and the tower of South Cornwall's, according to the nomination.
Church records show the committee was still undecided, even as the walls went up, between two tiers of side windows in the traditional style and one tier of long windows. It apparently split the difference: one row of long openings, each fitted with two tiers of windows, the nomination says.
The steeple is visible from every edge of the district, and the nomination counts that visual pull as one reason the area hangs together as a single historic district.
Source: National Register of Historic Places nomination, Somers Historic District (NPS, 1982).
How this story was made: AI tools helped research and draft this story, working from the sources cited and linked above. It was fact-checked against those sources, and our editor, Joshua Allen, reviewed and approved it before publication. See an error? Email upriverdaily@gmail.com.