At 87 Mountain Road (corner of Buena Vista Road) in West Hartford is the town’s oldest extant schoolhouse, a brick structure known as the Old West School. Since 1936, the former school has been occupied by the West Hartford Art League, which purchased the building from the town in 1965 on the condition that it be preserved and used exclusively for non-profit cultural and educational purposes.
A Stick Style residence dating to 1882 (or perhaps as late as 1892?), the Turner House is located at 274 North Main Street in West Hartford. A farmhouse, it was probably built by Daniel Lord, who died in 1893. The farm was then purchased by Margaret Turner, who farmed it with her husband until the 1930s. The land was then sold for a housing subdivision known as Sunny Slope. The house has an interesting external brick chimney that passes through the bargeboard trim at the gable end facing North Main Street. (more…)
At 15 Buena Vista Road in West Hartford is a Greek Revival house with a sign that indicates it was built in 1840 and was the home of Edward Stanley. There was an Edward Stanley (1814-1884) of West Hartford who married Susan Selden (1816-1888) that same year. The first state representative from the new Town of West Hartford in 1854 was named Edward Stanley.
This is West Hartford Week at Historic Buildings of Connecticut! Once thought to have been built in 1807, the Samuel Farnsworth House, at 537 Mountain Road in West Hartford, was originally constructed in 1790 as a two-room cottage. Samuel Farnsworth was born in Washington, New Hampshire, in 1762 and died in South Carolina. He married Elizabeth Goodwin in 1788.
When the Lord & Taylor at Bishops Corner in West Hartford (later a Caldors and now the location of Marshalls and other stoes) was built in the early 1950s, it replaced the Dutchland Farms restaurant and ice cream shop (which by then was known as Dutchland City). The restaurant’s building was notable for the prominent windmill above its front entrance. The building was taken down, but the windmill survives. An article in the Hartford Courant of July 13, 1952 (“Bishop’s Corners Windmill Moved To Pool At Nursery”) describes how the seven ton windmill was removed from atop the building and transported to its current home at Gledhill Nursery, 660 Mountain Road in West Hartford. The article notes that the windmill had been a familiar site for 20 years, so it would have been built c. 1932. Dutchland Farms was a chain and some of its other restaurants also featured ornamental windmills of various sizes.
One of the houses to be featured in The Friends of The Mark Twain House & Museum 32nd Holiday House Tour on Sunday, Dec. 2, is the Colonial Revival residence located at 4 Mohawk Drive in West Hartford. Built in 1930, the house is the work of architect Lester Beach Scheide and builder Louis Slocum. The house won a West Hartford Historic Preservation Award in 2005. The jury marveled at the amount of work done, which was based on extensive research and use of photographic evidence to restore the home’s former grandeur. The original plans for the house are in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society, where it is described as a “House for C. Gilbert Shepard.” C. Gilbert Shepard was the son of Charles E. Shepard, whose own house, built in 1900, is on Prospect Avenue. The younger Shepard served as a lieutenant in France in the First World War. Like his father, he became an insurance agent. The Yale Club of Hartford gives the C. Gilbert Shepard Award each year to freshmen from the area who excel at scholarship and athletics.
Prospect Avenue forms a border between Hartford and West Hartford. My new book, A Guide to Historic Hartford, Connecticut, features some interesting houses on the West Hartford side of the street, including the Robert Schutz House at 1075 Prospect Avenue. Unlike other residences nearby, this house is turned 90 degrees from the street. Built in 1907 and designed by Charles Adams Platt, the house was built for Robert Schutz, president of the Smyth Manufacturing Company, which still makes bookbinding machines today. The house was also the residence of his son, Robert Schutz Jr., who was an architect. As a trustee and president of the Mark Twain Memorial in the 1950s, Robert Schutz Jr. donated objects he found in the attic of this house to what is now the Mark Twain House and Museum.
