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

Heman Brainard House (1794)

According to Portrait of a River Town: The History and Architecture of Haddam, Connecticut (1984), by Janice P. Cunningham and Elizabeth Ann Warner, the house at 366 Saybrook Road in the Higganum section of Haddam was erected by Heman Brainerd (1754-1803) on land deeded to him in 1784 by his father, Phineas Brainerd (1720-1803), one of the original settlers of Higganum. It was described as a “new Dwelling House” in a 1794 deed, although town acessor’s records date the house to 1729. After the death of Heman’s widow, the house was purchased by James Gladwin and remained in his family for the rest of the nineteenth century. Dr. William H. Tremaine (1815-1883), a noted physician, lived in the house from 1850 to 1857, before he moved to Hartford. The house’s original stairway and chimney, destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century, were rebuilt by its later twentieth century owners.

John Wetmore House (1780)

In 1762, John Wetmore of Middlefield married his first cousin, Lois (a not uncommon practice among eighteenth-century farming families seeking to keep holdings within a larger family network). Circa 1780, the couple erected a house on land in Middlefield, owned by John’s father, Deacon Caleb Wetmore (1706-1788) who, unusually for the time, deeded the land to his niece and daughter-in-law Lois in 1786. The couple later deeded the property to their son, Captain John Wetmore, but during the 1790s, when Connecticut farmers were facing difficult times, he moved to Litchfield, where he died in 1847, and his brothers, Josiah, Azariah and James moved to Ohio. In eleven years the property had five different owners, but was them purchased by Jacob Miller and remained in his family until the early twentieth century. Located at 18 Maple Street, the Wetmore-Miller House has an early-twentieth century Colonial Revival entry portico.

Margaret Hills House (1871)

The house at 59 Burnside Avenue has been much altered over the years since it was first erected in about 1871. In its early years the house was successively owned by three women. It was built by Margaret Stanley Hills (1828-1892), who had acquired the land in 1865. She later sold the house to Martha W. Olmsted, but it eventually was passed to Margaret and her husband Edwin Hills’ daughter, Eliza Stanley Hills Kilbourne, who lived in South Windsor. She sold the property to Dr. Thomas O’Connell in 1898. He was a prominent physician and an elementary school in East Hartford is named for him.

Samuel Russell II House (1711)

The house at 5000 Durham Road in Guilford has been variously dated to 1711, 1754 and 1789. Known as the Samuel Russell II House, it is part of Bluff Head Farm, which includes several historic barns. The farm is located across the street from the entrance to Braemore Preserve (more…)

Lee Methodist Church – Tolland Grange Hall (1880)

The building at 95 Tolland Green in Tolland was erected in 1880 as the Lee Methodist Church. It was the second Lee Methodist Church built on the site, replacing the earlier church, built in 1794. That building was moved back 200 feet and in later years was known as the “ole vaporatin’ house” where apples were dried. It was torn down after suffering damage in the Hurricane of 1938.

The Lee Methodist Church merged with the Tolland Congregational Church in 1920, forming the Federated Church of Tolland (now the United Congregational Church of Tolland). In 1959, the old 1880 church building was sold to the Tolland Grange #51. Formed in 1886, the grange had already been using the building for meetings since 1932. In addition to the Grange, other groups, such as the Boys Scouts, met in the building over the years. Before St. Matthew Catholic Church was built, the parish used the Grange Hall as its temporary home and celebrated the first Catholic mass in Tolland there on July 12, 1964. The Grange put the building up for sale in 2012 and it was sold the following year.

Palmer House Hotel (1901)

The building at 122 Water Street in Torrington, constructed in 1901, was first known as the New Century Hotel. Later called the Palmer House, it was designed by Charles Palmer, who was also the architect of the Fire House across the street. Both buildings were built by Hotchkiss Brothers.

Winsted Bank (1851)

Sometime between the evening of Saturday, November 9 and the morning of Monday, November 11, 1861, robbers stole approximately $60,000, from the Winsted Bank. About $8,000 of this was in specie (gold and silver) and the rest included miscellaneous bills and treasury notes. The bank had been formed in 1848 (making it the second oldest bank in Litchfield County after the branch of the Phoenix Bank of Hartford on North Street in Litchfield) and the bank building was erected at 690 Main Street in 1851. Many of the stolen bills were Winsted Bank notes and the loss from the robbery led to the bank having insufficient net worth to receive a federal bank charter. The bank closed in 1864 and the building was acquired by the Winsted Savings Bank in 1867.

(more…)