From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
St. Joseph Catholic Church, Bristol, Conn.
View across a broad green taking in a church and two residences. This image is part of a series made by one of the three Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company photographers assigned to cover New England or upstate New York. The quest for images that would be saleable as postcards resulted in the documentation of small towns and small town life at the turn of the 20th century. As the photos were shot, the glass plates were promptly sent back to Belfast, Maine, and processed into postcards at the printing plant on High Street. The image is of the wood frame Gothic Revival building erected in 1855 to serve the Irish Catholic population of Bristol, a small industrial city in central Connecticut. In 1925 the parish replaced the structure with a much larger stone church.
