Stamford Landmark Church in 1913 & 2013

If you stand across Bedford Street from Latham Park, at the entrance to the parking lot for Pedigree Ski Shop, and look at the First Congregational Church of Stamford, you'll see just about the same thing someone saw from that spot a hundred years ago, in 1913.

The old picture shown here, colored by hand, appeared on a postcard mailed in 1913. It depicts what was then "the new Congregational Church" building for a congregation, founded in 1635, as old as Stamford itself.

There are some differences: The rainbow banner, a symbol of welcome for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexual and queer people that has hung from the church since March of last year was not something congregants of 100 years ago would likely have imagined possible, to say the least.

Trees, of course, have come and gone over the decades, but you can see more of them on each side of the church back then than you can today, perhaps indicating how the city has grown up around the church over time. You can also see more signs of various types, nowadays.

But the building, like the congregation in it, endures.

Editor's note: For a similar pair of photos of the other church facing Latham Park, the Unitarian-Universalist Church, take a look at: ""