30 Lewis Street, Hartford (1840)

July 29th, 2010 Posted in Hartford, Houses, Italianate | No Comments »

The former house at 30 Lewis Street in Hartford, like the nearby houses at nos. 24 and 36, was probably constructed by the designer and builder Austin Daniels around 1840. Like the building at 36 Lewis Street, no. 30 was altered to conform to the Italianate style, around 1860. The building became the home of the University Club in 1906 and the front door was then moved to the side of the structure. In 1928, a five-story rear addition was constructed. In more recent years, the building has been converted into office space.

Tolland County House (1893)

July 28th, 2010 Posted in Houses, Tolland, Victorian Eclectic | No Comments »

On Tolland Green is located the Old Tolland County Jail, the earliest surviving section of which dates to 1856. At one time the Jail was attached to a hotel known as the County House (first built in 1786), which could accommodate people who had business at the nearby county court. The hotel was owned by the state, but was managed under contract by a private innkeeper (who was sometimes also the jailer). The court later moved to Rockville in 1888 and the hotel was not rebuilt after it burned in 1893. Instead, it was replaced by a new County House, used primarily as a residence for the jailer and his family. The Victorian building was designed by local builder James Clough. Today, the house and attached jail serve as a museum, operated by the Tolland Historical Society.

53 Main Street, Stonington Borough (1787)

July 27th, 2010 Posted in Colonial, Houses, Stonington | No Comments »

Built in 1787, the house at 53 Main Street in Stonington Borough was shared by two brothers, Joseph and Benjamin Eells, whose wives drew a line down the kitchen floor, dividing it in two. The house was later home to the writers Grace Zaring Stone (d. 1991) and her daughter, Eleanor Perenyi (d. 2009). Stone, who was the great-great-granddaughter of Robert Owen, the British social reformer and socialist, wrote novels, including The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932), Escape (1939) and Winter Meeting (1946) (all three of which were made into films). She began using the pseudonym Ethel Vance for her anti-Nazi novel Escape, because her daughter, who had married the Hungarian Baron Zsigmond Perenyi, was at the time living at her husband’s castle in Ruthenia, then controlled by German-occupied Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine). Eleanor Perenyi later created an extensive private garden at the house in Stonington and wrote a classic book on gardening, called Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden (1981).

The Joel White House (1740)

July 26th, 2010 Posted in Bolton, Colonial, Houses | No Comments »

Built sometime between 1740 and 1780, the Joel White House is located on Bolton Center Road in Bolton. It was the site of Bolton’s first post office in 1812. Samuel Alvord was the first Postmaster.

First Church of Winsted (1891)

July 25th, 2010 Posted in Churches, Gothic, Winchester | No Comments »

The Ecclesiastical Society of Winsted was established in 1778. The name “Winsted” was a combination of the names of the two neighboring towns, Winchester and Barkhamsted, from among whose residents the new society was formed. After some debate, the first meeting house was built between the societies of Winchester and Barkhamsted, near the east-west road between the residence of Harris Brown and the Old Country Road in the Wallens Hill section of the village. With the population soon shifting away from Wallens Hill, a new and larger church was built on the East End Green in 1800. This structure served the congregation until a new church, constructed of granite, was dedicated in 1901. In 1949, the First Congregational and First Baptist churches were merged and the united congregation was called the First Church (Baptist and Congregational). After the Flood of 1955 damaged both the First and Second churches, a merger of these two congregations occurred in 1957, with the new Church of Christ (Baptist and Congregational) utilizing the Second Church building. 119 members of the First Congregational Church, fearing their old church would no longer be used for worship, broke from the new federation and, since 1958, the First Church of Winsted has continued as a separate congregation.

The Bronson B. Tuttle House (1881)

July 24th, 2010 Posted in Houses, Naugatuck, Queen Anne | No Comments »

In 1858, John Howard Whittemore formed a company with Bronson B. Tuttle to produce malleable iron hardware, a company that was eventually known as Naugatuck Malleable Iron. Tuttle’s brick house, unlike that of his partner Whittemore, survives today in Naugatuck Center, at the north end of Church Street. Built in 1879 to 1881, the brick and brownstone residence, designed by Robert Wakeman Hill of Warterbuy, is Queen Anne in style, elaborated with elements of other styles. The gable ends and tower dormers are decorated with a quarter sunburst design. There is quatre-foil-pierced terra-cotta cresting along the roof line. The original wraparound porch was later removed. The house remained in the Tuttle family until 1935, when it was given to the Borough of Naugatuck, the house has served as a school and is now the offices of the Naugatuck Board of Education.

The Martin Barber House (1835)

July 23rd, 2010 Posted in Federal Style, Houses, Windsor | No Comments »

One of a number of brick houses on Windsor Avenue in Windsor, the Martin Barber House at no. 992 was built around 1835. Barber bought the land, probably with the already completed house, from Margaret Roberts in 1839. Martin Barber ran a brick yard, with his brother Edward, located just south of his house. The house later passed to Barber’s wife, Eliza, in 1877 and then to his daughter, Caroline Barber Adams.

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