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.