On Christmas Eve, Westporters flock to many different churches.
Methodists will worship on Weston Road. The building is 50 years old, but it still looks beautiful and new.
It’s the successor to several Methodist churches.
The first was built on Poplar Plains, in 1790. It’s near the site of the longtime Three Bears restaurant. Today it’s once more a home of worship — for Chabad.
In the 1850s the Methodists moved to the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Main Street. There’s a law office now, at the tip of what was then a much larger town green.
A new church was built on (appropriately) Church Lane in 1908. In 1966 — to help pay for the move to Weston Road — that building was sold to the church next door, Christ & Holy Trinity. The Episcopalians still own it; it’s been rechristened Seabury Center.
But look at this photo:
The caption says “Saugatuck.”
This is clearly not Seabury Center on Church Lane. But the Myrtle Avenue/Main Street intersection is not in Saugatuck — not by a couple of miles.
Of course, the original name of Westport was “Saugatuck.” We became our own town in 1835 — a couple of decades before the Myrtle Avenue church was built.
Is this that one, simply mislabeled? Was there another Methodist church somewhere in Saugatuck?
And if so, what other churches have we lost? Click “Comments” below.
And whichever you worship at: Merry Christmas!