Steeple of historic Connecticut church collapses, no injuries reported
Last Thursday in New London, Conn., at 1:30 in the afternoon, without warning, the stupendous central spire of the First Congregational Church building fell over into the building’s sanctuary and crumbled into a huge pile of stones. There were no deaths or injuries. The building, completed in 1851, was deemed a total loss and is being demolished.
Also in 1851, the building of Pittsfield’s First Church of Christ was being warmed up for services one Sunday morning when fire spread from the stove and extensively damaged the interior. (This was the building where ball-playing youngsters broke some windows, back in 1791, leading to the enactment of a town bylaw prohibiting baseball, cricket, football or “any other game played with a ball” in the vicinity of the church building — the earliest written mention of baseball in America.)
The fire was put out, and the building could have been repaired. But although the wooden structure was designed by Charles Bulfinch, the stellar architect who had designed both the Massachusetts Statehouse and the U.S. Capitol building, the congregants were sick and tired of its archaic box pews and bone-chilling draftiness and immediately voted to build a new house of worship, specifying that it should be made of stone.
A committee was tasked with finding an architect, and found him in the person of Leopold Eidlitz, then living in New London, where he was supervising the completion of the First Congregational Church, the building that collapsed last week.
The New Londoners, having outgrown their previous building, had engaged Eidlitz based on his work, in partnership with Charles Otto Blesch, on St. George’s Episcopal Church in New York, which featured a facade with two enormous spires and a cavernous Gothic Revival interior with long side galleries. For New London, Eidlitz designed a smaller house of worship, with an outsized spire similar to the ones at St. George’s, flanked by two smaller towers with gabled roofs.
The First Church of Christ on Park Square in Pittsfield is pictured in this March 2020 file photo. The historic church’s current form was designed by Leopold Eidlitz, who was also the architect behind the First Congregational Church in New London, Conn., whose imposing steeple collapsed last week.
The New London church had cost $43,000, well above the budget of the Pittsfield committee, so they asked Eidlitz to come up with a design with just one tower, not as high, but a larger sanctuary and chancel. This became Eidlitz’s first solo design, Blesch having retired. It opened in 1853 and cost just $28,000.
Eidlitz, who was born in Prague, is believed to have been America’s first Jewish architect. He went on to an illustrious career that included designs for New York’s “Tweed Courthouse,” the Assembly side of the New York State Capitol and, at the smaller end of the scale, the building of the Hinsdale Public Library.
Eidlitz had a penchant for the spectacular, which led him to design for the Assembly Chamber of the New York State Capitol a room with a huge stone-ribbed vaulted ceiling, the largest such space in the Americas, completed in 1879. Unfortunately, the arches soon developed cracks and were deemed unsafe. While no catastrophic collapse occurred, Eidlitz’s ceiling was replaced with a coffered ceiling designed by others.
No doubt the Assembly Chamber structure failed because of faults either in its design or execution. But the New London church stood for 173 years before collapsing, through no fault of its designer but more likely because of the deteriorating effects of water seepage into mortar, combined with freeze-thaw cycles. Given the scale of the collapse, investigators might never find the precise point of failure.
The Pittsfield building still stands on Park Square, but on Jan. 21, after a long exploratory process, its congregation merged with that of South Congregational Church to form United Church of Christ, Pittsfield, which meets at the former South Church building on South Street.
The Park Square building has been well-maintained and updated over the years, with no danger of the kind of spectacular failure just seen at its New London counterpart. It is historically and architecturally significant and contains a number of stunning stained-glass windows, including one of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s earliest. Hopefully, it can be preserved for a combination of civic, cultural and religious purposes.
Martin Langeveld is a former publisher of The Eagle who served as a historian of First Church of Christ in Pittsfield.