A Brief History of St. Agnes Home

Established by the Sisters of Mercy in 1914, with the help of the St. Agnes Home Guild, the original building was on Steele Road in West Hartford. It was four stories high, with 120 rooms, including a delivery room on site. Many children remained at the facility until they were 3 or 4 years old. At any one time, over one hundred children were in residence!

During the sixties, more young women kept their babies rather than placing them for adoption, and the need for maternity homes here and throughout the country steadily declined. The Steele Road site was closed in 1972, but due to the persistence of the Sisters of Mercy, a new program site on a smaller scale, opened in the former Corpus Christi Convent in Wethersfield.

During the Eighties and Nineties, in recognition of the need to provide support to the many young mothers who were choosing to keep their babies, the St. Agnes Home Board began a mom/baby program which continued with prenatal services, relocated at the current West Hartford Mayflower Street site.