The Mystic Post Office is located at 23 East Main Street, on the Stonington side of Mystic. It is a colonial revival-style building erected in 1925 and later expanded an additional two bays on the left side of the front façade.
When forming a Lodge in 1921, Masons in Wethersfield chose the name Hospitality Lodge in honor of a nickname of the Webb House, located at 211 Main Street. Built in 1752 for Joseph Webb, Sr., the house became known as “Hospitality Hall” in the years before the Revolutionary War for the lavish parties hosted by Joseph Webb, Jr. and his wife Abigail. The house hosted a famous Mason, George Washington, when he met the French General Rochambeau in Wethersfield in 1781. Hospitality Lodge No. 128 AF&AM was chartered March 5, 1921. The Masonic Temple at 245 Main Street was built the following year and remained in use until 1997, when the Lodge merged with Stepney Lodge No. 133 from Rocky Hill to form Silas Deane Lodge No. 147, which later moved from Wethersfield. More recently, Masons in town wanted to form a new Lodge and were granted the old Hospitality No. 128 charter. The Lodge now meets at the Solomon Welles House in Wethersfield. The old Masonic building has remained vacant, although the town planning and zoning commission approved its conversion into a two-family home in 2014.
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Dating to c. 1903, the Canfield Building is a historic commercial block at 93-97 Main Street in the village of Canaan. Originally built to house the Canfield Lime Company. It features a pressed-metal exterior and cast-iron storefronts.
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The Congregational Church in Pomfret Center was organized in 1715 and its first meeting house was erected on White’s Plains, located on Pomfret Hill, just north of Needle’s Eye Road. The next meeting house was built on the town common in Pomfret Center in 1762. Interestingly, the church was painted orange. (In the coming years, the neighboring towns of Windham, Killingly, Thompson, and Brooklyn would emulate Pomfret’s example!). The church’s third meeting house was erected in 1832 on land acquired from a Dr. Waldo. The land was purchased with proceeds generated by the women of the church, who had knitted a hundred pairs of stockings to sell. In erecting the new church, builder Lemuel Holmes salvaged much of the building materials from the previous structure.
On December 7, 2013, a fire (likely caused by an accident during the repair of the building’s front steps) destroyed the historic church. It was soon rebuilt, following the original design as closely as possible, while creating a building that is a little larger than the original and set further back on the property at 13 Church Road. Construction took three years, with the new steeple being raised into place on August 30, 2016.
One of the older buildings on the campus of Hartford Hospital is the Brownstone Building, located at 79 Retreat Avenue. It opened in November, 1923 as the hospital’s Women’s Building, with a focus on maternity care. It was designed by Carl J. Malmfeldt of Hartford and was the subject of an article, “The Women’s Building of the Hartford Hospital, Hartford Conn.” by L. A. Sexton, MD, that appeared in Modern Hospital, Vol. XXII, No. 5 (May, 1924). The builders were the R. F. Jones Company and its construction was the last time that stone was used from the famed brownstone quarries in Portland. Along the sidewalk next to the building is a fence with a cast iron gate that features the symbol of the Caduceus and the letters “HH.” The building has housed various departments of the hospital over the years, currently being home to the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Clinic and the Department of Dentistry. Long known as the Brownstone Ambulatory Care Services Building, it formerly housed the outpatient Brownstone Clinic, which recently moved to a new space on Jefferson Avenue and is now called Hartford Hospital Community Health.
The Colonial Revival-style house at 142 Main Street in East Hampton has a Queen Anne-style octagonal side tower. The house was built in 1909 or 1910 by Mayo Smith Purple (1860-1942), a prominent businessman in East Hampton. For 35 years he worked for the Bevin Bell Company, eventually becoming the company’s secretary. Around 1914 he assisted in the reorganization of the Gong Bell Manufacturing Company, subsequently serving as that company‘s president for about 28 years. His other positions included president of the Watrous Manufacturing Company, treasurer and manager of the East Hampton Bell Company, and in the mid-1920s treasurer of the Bevins and Wilcox Line Company. Purple also served in the state legislature for a term in 1885-1886 and returned almost a half-century later for four consecutive terms from 1932 to 1940. In 1883 he married Gettine Louise Arnold, who died in 1935.
Henry Bennett Graves (1823-1891) was a lawyer in Litchfield who served several terms in the state General Assembly. He was also executive secretary to Governor Henry Dutton and he married the governor’s daughter, Mary Dutton. His second wife was Sarah Smith of Morris. In 1858 Graves built a Greek Revival house at 153 South Street in Litchfield. The house was sold to Cornelius M. Ray of Morris in 1865. After his death, the house passed to his daughter, Clara Belle Ray. The Ray family made alterations to the house, including the addition of the mansard roof and the south bay. Elizabeth Shields Hamlin bought the property in 1910. In the collection of the Litchfield Historical Society are blueprints for the building of a garage, an extension of the dining room, and other alterations to the house, made by Ross & McNeil, architects of New York. They were hired by Elizabeth’s husband, Elbert B. Hamlin in 1915. After her husband’s death in 1936, Elizabeth Hamlin sold the house in 1937.
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