First Magyar Reformed Church (1930)

first-magyar-reformed-church

In the early twentieth century a community of Hungarian immigrants was established in the town of Ashford. There is a Hungarian Social Club at 314 Ashford Center Road and at 200 Ashford Center Road is the former First Magyar Reformed Church. According to Ashford assessor records, the church was built in 1930 and was sold to a private owner in 2003. It was then renovated to become a residence. Next door to the former church is the Woodward Cemetery, which has burials primarily from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

H. E. Bishop House (1906)

Bishop House

The H. E. Bishop House, at 87 East Avenue in Norwalk, is a Colonial Revival residence, built c. 1905-1906. Designed by Joy Wheeler Dow of Wyoming, NJ, architect and author of American Renaissance: A Review of Domestic Architecture (1904), the house is modeled on the c. 1723 house at Shirley Plantation, on the James River in Virginia. The Bishop House attracted much attention after it was built, being featured in several magazines. In “Residence of H. E. Bishop, Esq., at Norwalk, Connecticut” (American Homes and Gardens, Vol. V, No. 21, February, 1908), Francis Durando Nichols writes:

The site chosen for the house was fortunately an elevated corner lot, more spacious by far than is usually to be had in the popular residential section of a city. Taking its situation as a keynote, the designer has given his composition an effect of massive elegance which makes it one of the most striking houses in its vicinity.

In “A New House Inspired by an Old One” (House & Garden, Vol. XVI. No. 1, July, 1909; reprinted in Distinctive Homes of Moderate Cost, 1910), Henry Lorsay, 3rd writes:

The house is surely not one of the million that we are perfectly content to pass by with never a second look. It compels attention, not because of any eccentricity in design, not because of any weird hybrids among its architectural motives, nor because of any unusual and dazzling color scheme, but solely because it does have that elusive quality of architectural distinction.

In “Four Colonial Houses” (American Forestry, Vol. 23, No. 279, March, 1917), Rawson Woodman Haddon writes:

The way by which we may preserve in the domestic architecture of today an undefinable charm—a certain warmth of personality with which American history has invested the wooden house——is what Mr. joy Wheeler Dow shows us in the buildings he has designed, and in his writing upon the various developments of American architecture, both historic and modern.

The house is now used as offices.

Frederick L. Scott House (1894)

113 Main

Frederick L. Scott built a house he called “Ingleside” at 113 Main Street in Farmington in 1894. Two years earlier Edward H. Deming had made Scott his partner in a general store on the west side of Main Street. Scott bought out Deming’s interest in the store in 1901 and succeeded him as postmaster the following year. Scott married Alice F. McKeen (1856-1912) in 1892. She was a music instructor at Miss Porter’s School and directed the Congregational Church choir. Scott sold the store in 1920 but retained ownership of the house for a number of years.

Tracy S. Lewis House (1916)

Lewis House

Update: As noted in a comment below, this house was demolished in 2022.

The house at 35 Wolfe Avenue in Beacon Falls was built in 1916 for Tracy S. Lewis, president of the Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company. The company had been founded in 1898 by Tracy S. Lewis and his father, George Albert Lewis. The Lewis House and its grounds are part of a neighborhood created on the highland above the rubber factory for the company’s workers. Called the Hill, the neighborhood was designed by the renowned landscape architects, Olmsted Brothers. Parts of the house may date to c. 1855, when the property was owned by the American Hard Rubber Company. The house later lost its original wood shingle siding. The town acquired the property in 2008 for future municipal use and in 2010, after a report was released on the feasibility of restoring the house, there were debates over whether the house should be razed or renovated. The house’s future remains undetermined.