Barber's Salisbury

Salisbury was a century old when John Warner Barber made this woodcut etching of a small portion of its Main Street in 1836 for inclusion in his Historical Collections of Connecticut.

Some of the buildings depicted exist today such as the Congregational Church in the foreground and the Academy Building to its left. The church, the oldest building in the Salisbury Center Historic District still in its original appearance, was built in 1800. The Academy Building, built in 1833, was brand new when Barber made his sketch.

The 1824 St. John’s Episcopal Church, farther down the street, makes use of three architectural styles, Greek Revival and Gothic Revival, as represented in its pointed stained-glass windows.

Barber was born in East Windsor in 1798. Following his father’s death, he was apprenticed with an East Windsor engraver named Abner Reed who taught him the art of printmaking—a skill that led him to become one of Connecticut’s most well-known illustrators and historians of the 19th century.

His Historical Collections of Connecticut, published in 1836 included hundreds of images of Connecticut cities and towns that began as rough pencil sketches and evolved into more detailed drawings.

Engraved onto small blocks, those drawings became the foundation for Barber’s illustrations in the book.