Collapsed spire was an instantly recognizable part of New London
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Jan. 25—NEW LONDON — For over 170 years, the stone spire of the First Congregational Church rose above downtown New London, a seemingly eternal reminder of the city's early days and an instantly recognizable part of its modest skyline.
The building the spire capped was built in the 1850s, but the congregation had its roots in the 17th century, arriving from Massachusetts just four years after the city's founding.
Led by its pastor, the Rev. Richard Blinman, whose name survives on a city street, the congregation came to New London from Gloucester, Mass., in 1650. Meeting at first in a barn, they built several churches over the years, one of which was struck by lightning in 1735, killing a parishioner.
The first building at the church's longtime home at State and Union streets was built in 1786, when the site was known as Bolles Hill or Zion's Hill.
When fire damaged the congregation's home in 1849, members voted to build a church of stone large enough to seat 800. They hired Leopold Eidlitz, a young architect born in Prague who would go on to design the New York State Capitol.
Eidlitz conceived a granite building in the Gothic style, and construction began on May 28, 1852, Kenneth Franklin Jacobs wrote in "Leopold Eidlitz: Becoming an American Architect." The seating capacity of the finished building was 1,100.
When it was dedicated on July 6, 1853, the majestic structure was a little more than had been asked for.
"Despite the request for a single tower, the main facade of the new church came to feature three: a tall central spire flanked by shorter gabled towers linked to the central tower by balustrade-capped walls," Jacobs wrote.
Those shorter gabled towers remained intact Thursday with a gaping hole between them where the central spire had collapsed. But they were unstable and set to be quickly demolished.
In her "History of New London," completed around the time of the church's construction, local historian Frances Manwaring Caulkins wrote that "the main features of the design belong to the most ancient Gothic style." She called the spire "light and graceful."
The tapering spire had a four-faced clock and was capped by a large gilded ball, with a 15-foot weathervane at the very top. In 1929, steeplejacks undertook a hazardous effort to take down the weathervane, estimated to weigh 100 pounds, because it was thought to be in danger of falling, according to a story in The Day.
The 90-pound ball was removed, gold-leafed and reinstalled in 1994.
In 2014, the dwindling congregation voted to sell the building to a different group, Engaging Heaven Church, while retaining the right to worship there.
"The goal is to preserve the building, and we're a wonderful congregation, but we just don't have the financial resources to invest in the building," Catherine Zall, the pastor, said at the time. The building sold for $250,000.
The two congregations had been sharing the building since 2011.
Engaging Heaven undertook a fundraising campaign in 2017 to repair the clock, whose four faces were each 7 feet 6 inches in diameter. It had not been running for at least a decade.
Thursday's collapse was not the first time a New London church building faced catastrophe. In 1871, part of St. Mary Star of the Sea Church on Huntington Street, then under construction, collapsed during a rainstorm.
The Second Congregational Church, originally at Huntington and Jay streets, was destroyed by fire in 1868, and its replacement, still standing at Broad and Hempstead streets, was heavily damaged by another fire in 1926.
