John Dodd Hat Shop (1790)

The museum building known as the John Dodd Hat Shop is located on the grounds of the Danbury Historical Society. It was not actually a hat shop, but was built in 1790 by lawyer John Dodd as his law office. The Historical Society acquired the building in 1957 and moved it from its original location on lower Main Street to its current address to house its hat shop exhibit. A variety of hats are on display, as well as hatting machines and other historical artifacts relating to the hatting industry in Danbury, which was known as the “Hat City of the World.”

Charles Mallory Sail Loft (1830)

Charles Mallory (1796-1882) was born in Waterford and learned sail making in New London as an apprentice to his brother-in-law, Nathan Beebe. In 1816 Mallory came to Mystic, where he soon set up his own sail loft. In 1836 he retired from sail making to focus on his fishing, whaling and shipping interests. His descendants would continue as an important shipping and shipbuilding family. Mallory had a sail making loft on the third floor of a building on Holmes Street in Mystic that he constructed circa 1830. All three floors were used for a variety of purposes over the years. In 1951 the building was brought upriver by barge to its current location at Mystic Seaport. The top floor has a sail loft exhibit, the middle floor has a ship rigging loft exhibit and the bottom floor has a ship chandlery exhibit. (more…)

Hodge Memorial Library & Museum (1937)

The first public library in the town of Roxbury was established in October 1896. It was housed in the back rooms of the old Town Hall until Charles Watson Hodge, upon his death in 1936, bequeathed $15,000 to erect a building for a library and museum. Completed in 1937 by Clayton B. Squire, the stone building was named after Charles Hodge’s father, Albert Lafayette Hodge. A north wing addition was completed in 1967 through a donation by Everett Hurlburt. A new building, the Minor Memorial Library, was erected in the early 1990s to become the town’s public library, with the Hodge Memorial, at 4 North Street, continuing as a museum open to the public by appointment only.

Fishtown Chapel (1889)

The Fishtown Chapel at Mystic Seaport was originally erected by the community of Fishtown in Mystic to serve as a place for Sunday School and prayer meetings in 1889. It took only three weeks to build. For a time around 1900 the Chapel served as a schoolhouse for Groton’s Ninth School District. It then remained unused for many decades until it was moved to Mystic Seaport in 1949. Restored, it was rededicated as a chapel in 1950. As seen in old postcards of the Chapel, it once had a steeple which has since been removed. (more…)

Plymouth Cordage Company Ropewalk (1824)

Preserved at Mystic Seaport is a section of the original ropewalk of the Plymouth Cordage Company of Plymouth, Massachusetts. The company was founded in 1824 by Bourne Spooner, who had learned the art of ropemaking in New Orleans. He opposed slavery, so he set up his business back home in Plymouth, hiring free labor. Spooner ran the company until his death in 1870, producing rope for many kinds of vessels, including the Great Republic, the largest clipper ship ever built. By the late nineteenth century, the company had become the largest manufacturer of rope and twine in the world. The company remained in business for 140 years. The ropewalk remained in operation until 1947, when changing technology led to the end of its use by the company. In 1951, a 250-foot section of the 1,000-foot ropewalk in Plymouth was saved and reassembled at Mystic Seaport. It came with its machinery, which is no longer powered but is set up as though it were still functioning in order to illustrate the process of spinning rope.

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American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailor’s Reading Room (1841)

One of the buildings at Mystic Seaport is set up to represent the American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailor’s Reading Room. The Society was incorporated in 1833 to provide moral and religious alternatives to the saloons, boardinghouses and brothels frequented by sailors while in port. The organization is best known for the libraries it placed aboard American ships for the use of sailors. The Society’s records are now held the Collections Research Center at Mystic Seaport. This historic organization is interpreted for Mystic Seaport visitors in a building erected c. 1841 as a work shop and tool shed by Clark Greenman of the George Greenman & Co. Shipyard. Starting in 1951, it was used as the Seaport’s Children’s museum, before housing the Reading Room exhibit. The building originally stood where the Treworgy Planetarium was built in 1960. It was moved to its current location in 1959. (more…)

Seeley-Dibble-Pinkney House (1820)

The home of the Rowayton Historical Society is the Seeley-Dibble-Pinkney House, located at 177 Rowayton Avenue in Norwalk. The house was built c. 1790-1820 and has been altered over the years. Part of the basement floor is paved with left over shipping ballast. Alfred Seeley purchased the house in 1820. He was a successful farmer and store-owner. He also built the first packet that traveled between Rowayton to New York. Seeley’s youngest daughter, Hannah Minerva, married Alphonso Dibble, who took title to the house and store in 1890. In turn their youngest daughter, Gertrude Hannah, who was married to William Pinkney, next occupied the house. The house was sold by Dorothy Cowles Pinkney, poet and widow of William Pinkney Jr., to the Sixth Taxing District of Norwalk (Rowayton) in 1971