Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

clocks

Beleden (1910)

Beleden, one of Connecticut’s great high-style mansions, is located on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol. Designed by the architect Samuel Brown of Boston, Beleden was built for William Edwin Sessions, of the Sessions Clock Company. The Sessions family operated a foundry that had been producing castings for the E.N. Welch Company, a Forrestville clock manufacturer. Around 1900, Sessions purchased E.N. Welch and in 1903 renamed it the Sessions Clock Company. In 1906, William E. Sessions, who had been living in a house on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol, purchased the adjacent house and land of Nathan L. Birge. The Birge House was torn down and over the next 4 years Beleden, completed in 1910, was constructed. The U-shaped brownstone mansion was once the centerpiece of a large estate, which featured formal and English gardens, a pool, greenhouses and grape arbors. These former grounds were later divided by Beleden Gardens Drive and built-up with smaller homes. Two buildings, a coachman’s lodge and a gardener’s cottage, were originally part of the estate but are now separated from the main house by newer structures.

John Birge House (1880)

John Birge was a state senator and president of N. L. Birge and Sons, a knitting mill, which had been founded by his father, Nathan L. Birge. His grandfather was John Birge, who had played an important role in Bristol’s clockmaking industry. Birge‘s house, on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol, was built around 1880. After his death, the house was purchased by William J. Tracy, who would found Tracy-Driscoll & Co. in 1920. Note the house in the upper-left of the historic image linked to above.

J. R . Holley House (1898)

Designed by Stanley S. Covert, the 1898 Queen Anne-style house of J. R. Holley, who was a vice president of the Bristol Brass and Clock Company, is located on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol.

Miles Lewis House (1801)

Miles Lewis built in 1801-1802 for his new wife, Isabinda Peck Lewis, on Maple Street in Bristol, is now the home of the American Clock and Watch Museum. Lewis was the son of Abel Lewis, who owned the Lewis Tavern. While Miles Lewis and his wife had no children, a niece of Isabinda came to live with them, and Peck descendants lived in the house until 1952. The next year it was bought by the Bristol Clock Museum. In 1956, a new wing was added to the museum, constructed with wood paneling saved from the 1728 house of Ebenezer Barnes.

Albert F. Rockwell House (1876)

Clifford S. Brown was the first owner of an 1876 Queen Anne-style house on Summer Street in Bristol, which was designed by Joel T. Case. Case’s houses are known for having unusual features, with this example having a square corner tower, uncommon for the Queen Anne style. The house was later sold to the inventor Alfred F. Rockwell, who lived there with his wife Nettie. He would later build a large mansion in Bristol, called Brightwood, which has since been destroyed.

Born in Woodhull, New York, Albert Fenimore Rockwell worked at various trades in different places, including several years in Florida in the fruit and hardware businesses. Leaving Florida because of yellow fever, he came to Bristol in 1888 and, in the next year, founded the New Departure Manufacturing Company with his brother Edward. Originally set up to produce a new doorbell based on clockworks, Rockwell’s company would become very successful making bicycle lamps and coaster brakes, which Rockwell patented with Harry P. Townsend. Later, New Departure became the world’s largest producer of ball bearings. Rockwell also produced various automobiles between 1908 and 1911, including the Rockwell taxicab and various Houpt-Rockwell models. In 1913, he was ousted from New Departure, which later became part of General Motors, but went on to purchase the Marlin Firearms Company, manufacturing Marlin-Rockwell machine guns and automatic rifles during the First World War. Before his death in 1925, he donated land for the city to build what is now called the Memorial Boulevard Middle School, on the road called Memorial Boulevard. He also donated the land for Rockwell Park.

S. E. Root House (1870)

We are beginning a week that will cover buildings in Bristol. The home of Samuel Emerson Root on High Street was built in 1870 (According to Bristol Historic Homes, it was built in 1854, although its builder, the inventor Joel T. Case, did not arrive in town until the early 1870s). Root and his partner, Edward Langdon, operated a factory manufacturing clock dials. The house has been altered for use as offices, with a a one-story brick addition being constructed in the twentieth century. The house is now used by the City of Bristol’s Youth Services.

Cheney Homestead (1785)

The brothers, Timothy and Benjamin Cheney, were important early American clockmakers. Timothy built the Cheney Family Homestead around 1785, and used a nearby brook to operate a grist mill that he built around 1790. After Timothy’s death in 1795, his oldest son, George Cheney, inherited the house. Among George‘s numerous children, his sons John and Seth became noted artists, while Charles, Ralph, Ward, Rush and Frank founded what would become the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company. Today the Homestead is museum, owned and operated since 1969 by the Manchester Historical Society.