The house at 1 Broad Street in Guilford was built in 1804 by architect-builder Abraham Coan for Abel Chittenden (1779-1816) on land that had been in the Chittenden family since 1639. After Abel’s death, his widow was in financial straits. She sold the house to Danforth Nettleton, who built the property’s unusual fence. In 1851, Abel’s son, Simon Baldwin Chittenden, returned to Guilford from New York, where he had made a fortune in the dry goods business. He bought back the old family homelot and developed the property into a landscaped summer estate. Behind the house he built a stone water tower, called Cranbrook Tower. Chittenden also added a Queen Anne-style front porch to the house, which was later removed, and a rear wing for a ballroom. He named the house at 1 Broad Street “Carnbrook,” after the place in England from which his ancestor, William Chittenden, had emigrated. He also purchased the house next door, at 29 Broad Street, which he named “Mapleside.” The house at 1 Broad Street remained in the Chiitenden family until 1968.
The stone building at 120 North Fair Street in Guilford was used as a school from 1855 until 1936. It was established as the Guilford Institute, as related in The History of Guilford, Connecticut (1877), by Ralph D. Smith:
Mrs. Sarah Griffing, widow of Hon. Nathaniel Griffing, deeded August 21, 1854, to E. Edwin Hall, Henry W. Chittenden, Simeon B. Chittenden, Alvan Talcott, Abraham C. Baldwin, Ralph D. Smith and Sherman Graves (who had been created a body politic under the name and style of The Trustees of the Guilford Institute), a piece of land situated in Guilford, as also the sum of ten thousand dollars, “for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a school in said Guilford of a higher order than the district or common school.” She states, in the deed, “whereas my wish is that the said school should in no sense be regarded as a sectarian institution but be open alike to all who wish to enjoy its advantages, and on the same terms, yet as it must necessarily be under some government and control, and as more harmony will be likely to prevail if all the directors or trustees are of the same religious views, my wish is that they should be of the denomination to which I belong, to wit, of the Congregational order and of that class designated and known at the present day as Orthodox or Trinitarian, of which the pastor of the First church in Guilford shall always be one, should he hold such religious views or belief.” She also expresses the wish that “the Bible should always be used in said school as the foundation of all education for usefulness or happiness.”
To this donation was added another of ten thousand dollars, by Hon. Simeon B. Chittenden, Brooklyn, N. Y., October 12th, 1855.
The corner stone of the building for the accommodation of the institute was laid September 13, 1854, on which occasion an address was delivered by Rev. T. D. P. Stone of the Normal school at Norwich, Conn. The building being completed, the first term of the institute was opened September 3, 1855, with suitable public exercises, and addresses by Rev. E. Edwin Hall, S. B. Chittenden, and others.
In September 1872, by an arrangement with the Union school district of Guilford, its scholars were admitted to the privileges of the institute free. In 1875 the institute failing to receive any interest on certain bonds constituting their investments, the trustees gave permission to the union district to occupy the building for a high school, which arrangement continues to the present time.
Guilford‘s North West Center School, a one-room school house, was built in 1848. It originally had a columned portico with three steps leading up to the entrance. It served as a school until a consolidation of schools in town in 1871. An agricultural class was taught here in 1922, but the building, located at 85 Fair Street, is now a private home. It once sat further back on its lot, but was then moved closer to the street. The bay windows are also a later addition.
For sixty years the First and Fourth Congregational Societies in Guilford each maintained their own schoolhouse, located next to each other on the Green. These were then combined into one building of two stories, erected in 1794. The building was moved from the Green to its current location, at 19 Church Street, in 1827. It then housed a secondary school, called the Guilford Academy (aka high school), on the upper floor. As related inA History of the Plantation of Menunkatuck and of the Original town of Guilford, Connecticut (1897), by Bernard Christian Steiner:
In 1837 the [town’s center school] district was divided into four parts and school houses built in the northeast and southwest districts, the northwest district occupying a part of the academy, the upper part of which building was occupied in 1838 by Mr. Dudley as a high school.
The academy closed in 1856, after the Guilford Institute (which would later become the high school) opened. The former Academy building then became a private residence. The front porch was most likely added around that time.
