Construction of Golden Hill Methodist Church

During the mid-1920s, a professional photographer, Lewis Corbit, created six films chronicling the construction of Bridgeport’s Golden Hill Methodist Church, a significant religious and architectural structure that still stands today. In chronological order by roll, they depict the signs identifying the builders of the new church, a policeman standing outside the original church, men constructing the new stone church, a survey of the church exterior, a tree planting outside of the new church, and the interior of the new church with its congregants.
In 1925, the faithful congregation of First Methodist Episcopal Church decided upon a major change.

For the previous century, First Methodist had been located at the northeastern corner of Broad Street and Fairfield Avenue in Downtown Bridgeport. The church had started out as a modest wooden structure, and was later replaced by a brick structure in 1850, and served the community for over 80 years. In the 1920s, this brick building was deemed unfit to serve the congregation any longer. The faithful began to raise $200,000 to fund an ambitious project that would sit at the corner of Harrison and Golden Hill Streets, in the words of the Bridgeport Post, “a place more congenial and yet still centrally located.” This new church would be a monumental Gothic structure, complete with a towering bell tower, of which the first proposed sketches prompted Bridgeport papers to liken the proposed church to the grandiose Roman Catholic cathedrals of medieval Europe. The church opened its doors in 1928, with construction on the additional parish hall being completed in 1929.

Nearly one hundred years later, the structure now called Golden Hill Methodist Church remains an active place of worship and a significant part of Bridgeport’s greater community, not just a place to worship for four historic Methodist congregations on Sundays, but also an institution that serves Bridgeport’s unhoused population, and a provider of food and services to the less fortunate. With its diverse and thriving community, Golden Hill Methodist Church remains a structure that reflects the history of religion, particularly mainline Protestantism, in Bridgeport throughout the 20th Century.

On November 20, 1930, the Bridgeport Time-Star released an article about First Methodist Church entitled ‘Methodism’s Progress in Step with City’s Growth’, detailing the site’s erection as an ‘important milestone’ for the religion in Bridgeport. Author George S. Hawley describes the intent behind First Methodist’s Gothic architecture, writing that “it offers a restful and reverential place for those seeking surcease from toil and worry, and a worshipful atmosphere for the preaching of the Word.” He also details the need for an additional building, writing “The modern feature, which would surprise and probably shock our forefathers, is the parish house which is ever equipped to meet the ever-increasing demands of a growing congregation upon a downtown institutional church.” This demand is indeed reflected in two of the six films, showing a bustling congregation of men, women, and children attending service in one and the dedication ceremony in the other. Such recorded activity gives us insight into the city’s pre-depression growth as reflected through First Methodist, where multitudes of immigrants and workers traveled into Bridgeport in order to work in factories of growing industries such as CASCO products.