the corner of Maple Street and State Street, stood in the way of widening the highway. "When he refused to cooperate with the town's plan for widening the street, the town went ahead and had the front of his house sawed off, and boarded up. Dwight immediately let the remainder of the rooms to an undesirable type of tenant. They persisted in disturbing the Sunday quiet and were hailed into court upon the complaint of the Unitarian minister. Dwight himself defended the offenders pleading that if they might not be allowed to play the fiddle and dance on Sundays that the church should not be permitted to play the organ and sing hymns .... Dwight himself paid their fines and told them to make all the noise they wanted to on Sunday. What the outcome of his advice was the story does not say." Neither does tradition tell us whether Christ Church people were annoyed or merely amused by such unhealthy excitement across the way.
The years flew by, and the changes came. A new church was built. In 1883 the old State Street property was sold for $15,000 to help pay the long standing debt. Its new owner, Mr. S. G. Otis, built it out to the street line, and named it Evangelist Hall. At one time, there was a printing press installed there, and two small religious papers published, "The Domestic Journal" and "The Weekly Evangelist."
The auditorium of the church was divided, the largest room being kept for the Evangelist Mission, in which Mr. Otis was especially interested; another room was rented by the W. C. T. U. The Reynolds Reform Club had another, and the Springfield Art Association rented several rooms for their work. Then for a limited time it was known as "Maple Hall."
In, 1911, it was purchased by the late Colonel A. H. Goetting who remodelled it beyond recognition. A mezzanine floor in the old church structure helped form a hall, devoted almost wholly to secular uses, which gave the building a new name, "Tourraine Hall." There were also in this building offices, stores, a photographers studio, and a few small tenements.
In Tourraine Hall, there remained two suggestions of the old
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