From 1883 to 1957, the building at 571 Church Hill Road in Trumbull served as the Town Hall. It was Trumbull’s second Town Hall. The first Town Hall, purchased by the Town of Trumbull in 1862, was a building on Daniels Farm Road, formerly known as Beach’s Tavern. Some years ago the old second Town Hall building on Church Hill Road was renovated and it is now used by the Trumbull Chamber of Commerce. The building is named for Helen E. Plumb (1904-2001), who was town clerk in Trumbull for many years. (more…)
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Town of Berlin had two town halls to serve the two sections of town, Kensington and Worthington. The building at 329 Percival Avenue, built circa 1855, was the Kensington Town Hall until 1907. In that year, the town acquired Brandegee Hall on Worthington Ridge to be a new Town Hall for all of Berlin (it served in that capacity until 1974). The former Kensington Town Hall became Percival School and is now a private residence.
Much altered over the years, the Classical Revival building at 1110-1112 Main Street in East Hartford was erected in 1832-1833. It was known as the Academy and housed the East Hartford Select School, also known as the Classical and English School. The school eventually closed and the building was acquired by Jonathan Tremaine Wells in 1858. It became part of the larger Wells estate to the east, which included the famous Wells Tavern. Upon his death in 1881, Wells willed the Academy to the town for use as a public building to be called Wells Hall. In 1885 it became East Hartford’s town hall and a new front entry tower was added to the structure. In addition to town offices, Wells Hall also housed a library and the police department, including jail cells. On the second floor was a large public hall, used as a ballroom and as a meeting place for the Grange and the Grand Army of the Republic. When the current Town Hall building was erected in 1937, ownership of Wells Hall reverted to the heirs of Jonathan Wells, as per his will. For many years the building was the Old Town Hall Inn and Restaurant. In the 1930s to 1950s, the Inn had a dinner theater that hosted famous performers. In more recent years the building has been restored and expanded and a 1924 addition on the front of the building, which for many years blocked the 1885 entrance, was removed. Wells Hall now houses the offices of the East Hartford Board of Education.
For many years, Mansfield’s Old Town Hall (built in 1843) was used to store town records and hold town meetings. Business was conducted at office holders’ homes. Eventually the need to have a central place for town offices led to the construction of the Town Office Building, a WPA project completed in 1935 (the date on the cornerstone), next to the Town Hall. An addition was constructed in 1957 and town offices were moved to another larger building in the late 1970s. In 1980, the Mansfield Historical Society moved into the old Office Building.
Phoenixville is a village in the town of Eastford. At the junction of Routes 44 and 198 (4 Hartford Turnpike) is a former residence that would become the Union Society of Phoenixville House. It was built in 1806 as the home of Smith Snow (1784-1842), a mill-owner. In 1858, Snow’s heirs conveyed the house to Lydia Clark, the wife of his nephew, Albert B. Clark (1825-1903), a shoemaker. Around the turn of the century, the house was already being used as a nondenominational Sunday School, which officially incorporated in 1907 as the Union Society of Phoenixville and purchased the building. It also served as a meeting place for the local community and by the 1940s was commonly known as the Community House. The building was moved a short distance west of its original location circa 1930 to accommodate highway improvements. The building was in use until 2000, but already before that time fewer events were being held and maintenance issues had made preserving the building difficult (by the 1960s the upper floor had become unsafe). The Union Society sold the building to the Town of Eastford in 2002 and it has since been the object of preservation efforts (the roof was replaced in 2009).
