By Jeff White

On the afternoon of June 13, 1792, an assembly of Newtown men took on a landmark task. They moved the bleach-white Meeting House from its location practically in the middle of Main Street 132 feet to the west. Using a series of long logs, the men pushed the Meeting House to its current location.

This Sunday, December 12, the Newtown Meeting House will be spruced up for the holiday season and honored during a two-hour Heritage Gala and rededication ceremony.

Mounted members of the Second Company Governor's Horse Guard, donning full colonial regimental dress, will be in attendance to stand on Main Street to greet guests attending the function. Leonard Manz, Sr will provide organ selections as guests assemble.

The short program will feature introductions of the Trustees of the Heritage Preservation Foundation, along with presentations of honors and documents with interludes of music by harpist Edith Johnson and the Newtown Choral Society Ensemble.

The Meeting House will be adorned with holiday garlands and wreaths from top to bottom, each wreath decorated with a bright red antique-style velvet bow.

This is the second Heritage Gala held at the Meeting House. The first was a celebration in 1991 to commemorate the original restoration of the building and the deeding of the building back to Newtown from the Newtown Congregational Church.

The Congregational Church, which had been using the building as a house of worship for over two hundred years, officially deeded the building to Newtown in 1988. The town accepted the building and established the Heritage Preservation Trust of Newtown, Inc, a nonprofit association that set about raising funds to pay for the Meeting House's restoration and refurbishment.

On Sunday, a plaque will be presented to the Newtown Congregational Church in commemoration of their gift.

For the numerous townspeople who have been involved in one way or another with the Meeting House over the years, including Newtown historian Daniel Cruson, Sunday's rededication and celebration will be a way of both honoring and solidifying the building's place at the center of the community.

A History At The Center Of Newtown

"The meeting house was the centerpiece of the colonial and post-colonial New England village," writes Daniel Cruson in his essay, "The Old Meeting House," which was originally published in the newsletter of the Newtown Historical Society. "It was frequently the most imposing building, but more importantly it was the social, religious and political center of the community."

For the first nine years after Newtown's incorporation in 1711 the town did not have a public place to gather and worship; most church services and town meetings were held in private homes.

The first Newtown Meeting House was completed by 1720 thanks largely to the efforts of a local resident, Thomas Skidmore. The town voted to locate the Meeting House at the intersection of Main Street and Church Hill Road and West Street, where the flagpole looms today, Mr Cruson writes.

Citizens decided to move the Meeting House to its present day location because of the town Episcopalians' desire in the early years of the 1790s to build their third church, in the middle of Church Hill Road; the Meeting House "was directly in the way of the proposed front door of the church," Mr Cruson notes.

Since its dramatic move to the site it now occupies, the Meeting House has undergone many progressive changes. It was left unfinished by the early 1800s due to a lack of town finances. However, Mr Cruson maintains that evidence supports that there were definitely church services being held at the structure by 1816.

In 1845, thanks largely to increased funds, the belfry was completed and enclosed, a steeple was built, and the Meeting House's facade was resided, painted and finished.

In 1852, due to an increased demand for space, the floor of the Meeting House was raised four feet to allow for the construction of a basement lecture room, Mr Cruson writes. In addition, new pews and a pulpit were built along with new communion tables and chairs.

From the renovations of 1852 until the Meeting House's addition in 1957, many of the improvements on the structure were far from extensive.

In 1957, however, a 15-foot addition was built at the west end of the gallery to accommodate a newly purchased pipe organ.

Besides receiving several coats of paint and a new roof in 1991, the Meeting House has remained unchanged structurally since that addition in 1957.

Though the Meeting House has seen its share of improvements, which were made often to meet the changing times, it still retains an air of antiquity because so much of the original structure remains intact. "Much of the beam structure of the present building is from the original Meeting House and an examination of the beams in the belfry and roof show clear signs of having been used in the earlier structure," Mr Cruson writes.

Additionally, the granite steps which rise up to the Meeting House's front door date back in 1767, and the rooster weather vane, long a symbol of Newtown, has its origins in the 18th Century, Mr Cruson notes.

On Sunday, those in attendance, amid speeches and refreshments, may reflect upon the power of a symbol to shape a town's identity. For nearly 200 years, the Meeting House, at the town's center, has been such a symbol; to this day, the scene most identified with Newtown can be viewed from Old Castle Drive, looking out at the Meeting House, standing stoically under a flapping flag.

"A building such as the meeting house therefore reflects all of the historical periods through which it passed," Daniel Cruson writes. "As a result this building is not just a symbol of Newtown, but rather it embodies the very spirit of the community and reflects the people and ideas that, over time, created the town and gave it the personality that it has today."