Historic Buildings of Connecticut - Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Allen Avery – Welcome Fidler House (1879)

Allen Avery (1838-1915) was a businessman in Mystic who was very active in the local community. He worked as a ship joiner before entering the undertaking business, later opening a furniture store and then engaging in the real estate. He is associated with several houses in Mystic, including his 1874 house on Pearl Street on the Groton side and a later house on East Main Street on the Stonington side. In about 1879 he also erected the building (pictured above) at 6 Pearl Street. It’s described in the National Register of Historic Places Nomination form for the Mystic River Historic District as a “1 1/2-story cottage with roof of four gables, one in each direction,” as well as “Italianate solid brackets at the eaves returns of the front gable.” Also, “Window caps have small brackets.”

As related in the booklet The Mystic River Historical Society: Our First 40 Years (researched and written by Patricia M. Schaefer) the building was purchased in 1985 by Sandor Balint, first violinist
of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He and his wife Joyce, who was also a violinist, felt it was a good omen that the house had been owned in 1912 by a man named Welcome Fidler. According to Kelly Sullivan, Fidler was a carriage-maker from Woodville, Rhode Island, where he was the subject of frequent raids by the local authorities for running illegal saloons. He then relocated to the building on Pearl Street in Mystic, where he operated a lunch room and pool hall on the ground floor and lived upstairs. He had not left his old ways behind however, because in 1909 and again six years later, he was raided by the police, who seized quantities of whiskey.

House at 30 School Street, Enfield (1878)

Built in 1878, the house at 30 School Street in the Hazardville section of Enfield has many features of the Italianate style of architecture, including a square shape with bracketed cornice, a rooftop cupola/belvedere, and a one-story columned entrance portico and side porch.

Sears, Roebuck & Co., Danbury (1929)

The modernistic brick building at 129 Main Street in Danbury has glass block windows on the second floor. Designed by William E. Lehman, it was originally built in 1929 as a Sears, Roebuck and Co. store and is now a Salvation Army Family Store and Donation Center.

St. Catherine Church, Broad Brook (1881)

Rev. James Smyth, pastor of St. Mary’s Church in Windsor Locks, celebrated the first Catholic Mass to take place in the Broad Brook section of East Windsor in 1856. Later, a mission church dedicated to St Patrick was built on land donated by Broad Brook Catholics and it remained in use until 1880. Originally under the jurisdiction of St. Bernard’s, Rockville, the mission was transferred in 1863 to the new parish of St. Patrick’s in Thompsonville. The cornerstone for a new mission church, located at the intersection of Rye Street, Main Street and Windsorville Road in Broad Brook, was laid by Bishop Lawrence S. McMahon of Hartford in early fall of 1880 and the church was completed late the following year. The church again became a mission of Rockville in 1882 and four years later, in 1886, became a separate parish, dedicated to St. Catherine of Siena. The church has stained glass windows depicting scenes from the life of St. Catherine designed by the artist Emil Frei. The adjoining rectory was completed in 1887. The church has been updated over the years, with a new wing being added in 1957. Now, together with St. Philip Church in East Windsor, St. Catherine’s is part of St. Marianne Cope Parish.

(more…)

Luther Savage House (1840)

The house at 598 Main Street in Portland was built circa 1840. It was originally the home of ship carpenter Luther Savage, who married Mary Jane Buck in 1850. In 1927, the house was still occupied by Savage’s descendants, who estimated the house had been built 81 years earlier (1846).

Burrows Hill School (1730)

At the corner of Burrows Hill Road and Schoolhouse Road in Hebron is the Burrows Hill School. Thought to have been erected between 1725 and 1735, it is the oldest of nine former one-room school houses that remain standing in town. After opening, the school remained in operation until a period circa 1834-1860, when the number of children in the Burrows Hill area declined and the school in the Hope Valley area was growing instead. The Burrows Hill School was again flourishing in 1870 but experienced a decline by the early 1900s, closing for good in about 1911. In 1969, the Hebron Historical Society acquired the building and its furnishings from the Town of Hebron and it is now used it as a museum. In 1993, to protect the old school house from oncoming traffic, the structure was moved to a new foundation, forty feet from its original corner location.

(more…)

Neri Case House (1848)

The house at 529 Cherry Brook Road in Canton was erected circa 1848 by Neri Case (1803-1890). In the 1869 Atlas of Hartford and Tolland Counties the house is labeled as the property of L. Case. This was Lucius Case (1819-1894), Neri’s son-in-law. From 1937 until 1958, the house served as the North Canton post office. At the time it was the residence of Mrs. Ruth Vining Gracy, who was the postmaster. She continued in that role after the current North Canton Post Office building at 531 Cherry Brook Road was opened in 1958, retiring in 1967. The post office had previously been located in the Adams House at 4 West Simsbury Road, the previous postmaster being Gracy’s aunt, Mary Vining Adams. Gracy was active in the Cherry Brook Grange and the North Canton Methodist Church. She wrote a poem about the wedding of Dorothy Bahre and Richard Wright on Christmas Eve, 1939 when the church caught fire! She also wrote historical articles in the magazine The Lure of the Litchfield Hills about the church and the North Canton schools. Her son Forrest Gracy served as a U.S. Marine in the South Pacific during World War II.