Author: Daniel

Olympia Diner (1950)

This month’s issue of Connecticut Explored (the magazine formerly known as the Hog River Journal) has an article on the architecture of the Berlin Turnpike, written by Mary M. Donohue. According to the article, the Olympia Diner, on the Turnpike in in Newington, was built around 1950. It was one of many diners made by the Jerry O’Mahoney Company in the 1950s. Diners of the period retained many aspects of the earlier art deco style. The Olympia Diner continues to operate as a popular restaurant and historic landmark.

Whitmore Homestead (1786)

The Federal-style Whitmore Homestead, built around 1786, is at 20 Riverview Road in Rocky Hill. There is a small structure on the property thought to have been used as the town’s first post office. The house was also a stop on the Underground Railroad, with a hidden passage in the upstairs closet used by fugitive slaves.

Edwin Fitch House (1836)

The Fitch House is a Greek Revival home in Mansfield Center, built in 1836, which is now a bed & breakfast. The house was built by the architect and builder, Col. Edwin Fitch, who was hoping to impress his father-in-law, Dr. Jabez Adams and launch his career. Fitch later designed the Second Congregational Church in Coventry. Bankrupt by 1843, Fitch sold half of the house to Edmund Golding, who bought the entire house in 1848. Golding, who died in 1854, and Lewis D. Brown, who bought the house in 1865, were both Mansfield silk manufacturers. In 1906, the house was acquired by Carrie Amidon Havens, who later married Oliver Perry, a descendant of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. They enlarged the house, adding wings with porches on either side. The property also has two connected English-style historic barns.

Cathedral of Saint Patrick, Norwich (1879)

The Catholic Cathedral of Saint Patrick Parish, on Broadway in Norwich, was built during the 1870s. The new Cathedral was built because of the crowded conditions at Norwich’s first Catholic Church, St. Mary’s, which was built in 1845 and was the first Catholic Church in Connecticut on the East side of the Connecticut River. The Gothic-style Cathedral was designed by James Murphy of Providence, who was the brother-in-law of the famous church architect, Patrick Keely. The Cathedral was largely constructed by Norwich’s Irish residents. Ground breaking took place on Good Friday 1871 and the first mass was held in the completed building on St. Patrick’s Day, 1879. The Cathedral was extensively renovated in the 1950s.

Samuel Dix House (1764)

The brick home of Samuel Dix in Wethersfield was built in 1780, or perhaps earlier in 1764, on Wolcott Hill Road near Wells Road. The house, which was also known as the Leonard Dix House, remained in the Dix family into the twentieth century. The interior was later completely altered from the original arrangement.

Albert Sisson House (1867)

Albert L. Sisson was born in Bloomfield and became successful in Hartford operating a meat market in the Sisson Block, a building which once stood at Main and Sheldon Streets, and as a tobacco trader. In 1867, he built a brick Italianate house on his estate on Hubbard Street, which was renamed Sisson Avenue in his honor in the 1870s. He was also involved at the time in the founding of the Asylum Avenue Baptist Church. Sisson died in 1886 and his wife, Mary Gorton Sisson, died in 1898. The house was used for a time as a hospital for scarlet fever patients and in 1902 was acquired by the cathedral corporation of the Hartford diocese. Bishop Michael Tierney of Hartford gave the property to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd for use as a home for wayward girls. The house was expanded in 1905 and additional buildings, including Marian Hall and Euphrasia Hall, were constructed on the estate in 1920s. The “House of the Good Shepard” complex was sold by the Sisters in 1979 and today serves as subsidized senior housing.

Blockhouse at Fort Trumbull (1796)

The oldest surviving structure at Fort Trumbull in New London is a granite blockhouse, built in 1796. It was built after Congress authorized funds for the fortification of American seaports in 1794. The fortifications in New England were under the direction of a French engineer, Stephen Rochefontaine. Designed with tapering walls to resist exploding shells, the blockhouse (also known as a citadel) housed a powder magazine and soldiers’ living quarters. It was also intended to become its own mini-fort, a final stronghold if the main fort fell to an enemy. Of all the buildings constructed in America as part of the 1794 program, the blockhouse at Fort Trumbull is the only one still standing today.