Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Abraham Coen House (1808)

Abraham Coen, a Guilford builder-architect, built his house at 29 Broad Street on the foundation of the earlier Chittenden House. Its design was influenced by the work of builder-architect Peter Banner, who was designing the house of Yale’s president and other buildings on the Yale campus at the time. Banner later designed the Park Street Church in Boston. Coen had a joiner’s shop near his home. The house was purchased by Simon Chittenden in 1857 and named “Mapleside.” The entrance was then moved from the front to the west side of the house.

Matthew Miller House (1786)

The house at 1846 Main Street in Glastonbury was built in 1786 for Matthew Miller, the grandson of William Miller, whose 1704 house is nearby at 1855 Main Street. A brick from the house’s chimney bears the impression of both sides of a Piece of Eight, a Spanish coin. It was probably a ballast brick, carried on a ship traveling from South America or the West Indies. The brick is on display at Glastonbury’s Museum on the Green.

Edward Parker House (1870)

In the nineteenth century, Edward (or Edwin) Parker was a machinist who lived in the house at 716 Main Street in Plymouth. The house is a late vernacular version of the Italianate, built in 1870 and retaining some decorative features of that architectural style. Behind the house is a carriage house/barn with a small cupola.

4 S Maple Street, Hazardville (1870)

At 4 S Maple Street in Hazardville in Enfield is a Gothic Revival cottage which dates to 1870. The house has decorative bargeboards and on both sides of the house are recessed porches under flush boarding that extends from the eaves.

Tolland Inn (1800)

The Steele House at 63 Tolland Green in Tolland dates back to around 1800, although there is evidence it may have started as a late eighteenth-century saltbox. The house was once owned by Benjamin Ashley and later by Lucius Fuller. Several residents served as cashier at the Tolland Bank. The house was enlarged in the mid-nineteenth century and the original central chimney was eventually removed. The Steele House was the last of a series of inns and hotels that had served visitors on Tolland’s village Green. Run by John H. and Alice Webster Steele, it began taking guests in 1914. The Steeles operated the guest house until 1942 and owned it until 1958. Susan and Steve Beeching bought the property in 1985, renovated it and opened it in 1987 as the Tolland Inn, a bed and breakfast.

Herrick Frost House (1882)

Built circa 1882 (or 1876?) and designed by Henry Austin & Son, the house at 612 Chapel Street in New Haven was the residence of Herrick Frost. As described in Volume 2 of A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918), Herrick Payne Frost

in 1856 made his home in New Haven, where after several experiments in various enterprises, in 1858 he formed a partnership with Julius Tyler, Jr., establishing the wholesale grocery house of Tyler & Frost, on State street. This business Mr. Frost prosecuted with great energy and varied success for nearly twenty years, the partnership being dissolved in 1876, at about the time the telephone was just coming into public notice.

Inspired by Alexander Graham Bell’s demonstration of his new invention–the telephone–at Skiff’s Opera House in New Haven on April 27, 1877, Civil War veteran and telegraph man George W. Coy created an experimental switchboard. He won a Bell telephone franchise for New Haven and Middlesex counties and received financial backing from Herrick Frost and Walter Lewis, superintendent of the New Haven Clock Company. Establishing the District Telephone Company of New Haven, the partners opened the world’s first telephone exchange in January 1878 with 21 subscribers.

Again according to A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County:

The new enterprise attracted general attention, and in less than three months after its inauguration it had one hundred and fifty subscribers, and within a year over four hundred. Mr. Frost and his partner were thus instrumental in giving to New Haven the credit of leading the world in this important line. By 1880 capital had become interested in the further development of the system, and the New Haven Telephone Company was merged into the Connecticut Telephone Company, with the late Marshall Jewell, of Hartford, as president, and Hon. Charles L. Mitchell and Morris F. Tyler as directors. This company in 1884 underwent another change, becoming the Southern New England Telephone Company, with a capital of one and a half million dollars. Through the foresight, energy and ability of Mr. Frost, to whom was committed the general management of this great and growing corporation, the lines of the company were carried into nearly every town, hamlet and school district, within the territory in which they operated, and until a very few years ago there was no district in the world with so many telephones in use, in proportion to its population, as Connecticut.

William Sears House (1860)

The 1825 house of Bethel Tuttle, at 10 Academy Street in New Haven, was later expanded around 1860 into an Italianate-style house by William H. Sears, who worked at E. Arnold & Co. According to the History of the City of New Haven to the Present Time (1887):

The firm of E. Arnold & Co., 236 to 240 State street, dealers in stoves, furnaces, ranges, and galvanized cornices, was formed in 1846, and has been located on the same street ever since. They are also engaged in tin-roofing, plumbing, and gas-fitting. The individual members of the firm are E. and George J. Arnold.