Easter and Christmas were the obvious times I got to get dressed up in the gloves and shoes. The other was the two times a year my mother and I served high tea at St. Luke's Home at 135 Pearl St.

For those of you who know me, clearly this seems incongruous. But I loved doing it.  Both my mother and her mother, Frances Molander, were volunteers at the home for elderly Episcopalian women from the Church of the Holy Trinity. And I adored the ritual of high tea.

Originally known as St. Luke's Home for Destitute and Aged Women (who wouldn't want to be sent to a place with such a comforting name) was incorporated by an act of the Connecticut State Assembly in 1865. It was first housed in the former Mackinster house at the southwest corner of Court and Pearl streets (see map), until a large bequest from a church parishioner allowed the organization to build its new facility in 1892 at Pearl and Lincoln streets.

It was an early version of an assisted-living facility! It was quite glamorous and comfortable, considering the name.  It housed 14 women in private rooms and the entire first floor, accessed by the doorway on the north side below grade level, was public space for the residents. It was on this floor that tea was offered from the silver tea service in a lovely room with someone playing a tune on the grand piano.

I was particularly mesmerized by the elevator that brought the women from the top three floors down to the salon room. I had never seen a two-person elevator in, what seemed to me, a private home.

This had been the intention of the builders of the home ... to provide a carefully-designed apartment house, rather than an institution.

In the 1980s, the Pearl Street home was sold to the Rak family, who  converted it to apartments.

Today, St. Luke's Home still operates an assisted-living facility at 144 Broad St.