Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Colonial Revival

Bristol Public Library (1906)

The Bristol Public Library first opened in 1892 in cramped quarters in a building on Main Street. In 1896 it moved to the Charles Treadway house at the corner of Main and High Streets. On this site a new library was built in 1906 and dedicated the following year. A Colonial Revival building, it was designed by Wilson Potter of New York, who specialized in academic buildings. A Children’s Library wing and an Auditorium were later added on the north side of the building, but these were razed in 2006 for a new addition, which better reflects the original Colonial Revival architecture.

Corpus Christi Church, Wethersfield (1939)

The first Catholic parish in Wethersfield was Sacred Heart parish, organized in 1876. In August of 1938, the parish’s church on Hartford Avenue was devastated by fire. Rev. George M. Grady, pastor of Sacred Heart, soon purchased an extensive tract of land on the Silas Deane Highway for the construction of a new church. Many parishioners assumed that the new church was to replace the one lost in the fire, but it was decided to make the new building a mission church of Sacred Heart. Named Corpus Christi, the new church was designed by architect John J. McMahon (1875-1958) in the Georgian Revival style to reflect Wethersfield’s colonial background. It is built of Harvard red brick with limestone trim. The church was dedicated on November 26, 1939 and Corpus Christi was officially established as a separate parish on September 27, 1941.

In July of that same year, the church’s pastor, Rev. Patrick T. Quinian, received a letter from Bishop Ambrose Pinger of Shantung (now Shandong), China. A photograph of the Wethersfield church in the Catholic Directory of 1941 had captured the bishop’s imagination and he asked to be sent plans for the church so that its design might be copied for the new cathedral in Chowtsun (now Zhoucun)!

Covenant Congregational Church (1960)

Covenant Congregational Church in West Hartford began as the Swedish Zion Congregational Church, established in Hartford’s Frog Hollow neighborhood in 1889. The congregation’s first church building was constructed on Hungerford Street in 1892. Its name was changed to Covenant Congregational Church in 1938. Covenant Congregational Church later moved to West Hartford, laying the cornerstone to its present church on April 24, 1960. Located at the intersection of Sedgwick Road and Westminster Drive, the church was designed by Painchaud and Ryder of Madison, Wisconsin and was built by Bartlett, Brainard & Eacott of West Hartford. The building was dedicated on October 16, 1960. The church, which is Lutheran in theology and Congregational in organization, is affiliated with the Evangelical Covenant Church.

Frohsinn Hall (1906)

Social Society Frohsinn, a German heritage club, was founded in the first decade of the twentieth century by German weavers employed by the Rossie Velvet Mill in Mystic. Frohsinn Hall, at 54 Greenmanville Avenue, was built in 1906, just a few years after the mill. It has a bar upstairs and a hall on the first floor. Over a century later, the building is still used for its original purpose, with some current members being the descendants of the first mill employees.

24 Cone Street, Hartford (1915)

The house at 24 Cone Street in Hartford’s West End was constructed in 1915. The house was designed by architect Russell F. Barker (1873-1961), who designed many other residences in the area. Early in his career, Barker had worked for George Keller and later for William, H. Scoville. (more…)

George T. Hetheway House (1915)

The house at 800 Clinton Avenue in Bridgeport was built in 1915 for George T. Hatheway, a real estate and insurance agent. As related in Vol. II of The History of Bridgeport and Vicinity (1917), George Thomas Hatheway “was born in Pequonnock, town of Windsor, Hartford county, August 5, 1865.”

George T. Hatheway was but a young lad at the time of his father’s death. He acquired his early education in the public schools, pursuing a course in the New Britain high school and also in the normal school there. The necessity of providing for his own support forced him at the age of sixteen years to become a wage earner and he secured a clerkship in a drug store at Unionville, Hartford county. In that store the village postoffice «»s conducted and in addition to selling drugs and sundries his duty included handling the mail. After two or three years there spent he removed to Winsted, Connecticut, but in the meantime, while still in the drug store at Unionville, he had taken up the study of telegraphy, there being a telegraph office also in the store. He thus picked up a knowledge of telegraphy and at Winsted was appointed to the position of Western Union operator. When about nineteen or twenty years of age he came to Bridgeport and accepted the position of operator in the Bankers & Merchants telegraph office. In a short time he went to New York city as operator in the main office of the Western Union Telegraph Company. He remained there for about two years after which he returned to Bridgeport with the Western Union Company and devoted eight or ten years to telegraphy in this city and also taught telegraph; in a local business college, his teaching paying his tuition for a course of study in the same institution, from which he in due time received a diploma. He then devoted five or six years to bookkeeping in a wholesale and retail hardware store and in August, 1901, he embarked in his present business of insurance and real estate. In this connection he soon forged to the front and for many years he has been one of the city’s leading fire insurance and real estate men, his business having now assumed extensive and gratifying proportions, he has never had a partner, always conducting his interests under his own name, which has become a synonym for progressiveness, enterprise and reliability in insurance and real estate circles. He is now president of the Bridgeport Fire Underwriters Association. He is thoroughly familiar with property upon the market, is correct in his valuation and has negotiated many important realty transfers satisfactory alike to seller and purchaser.

Hatheway married Clara Trulock Davis of Arkansas in 1893. They had two children.

Morris I. Rome House (1925)

The house at 814 Laurel Avenue in the Statfield section of Bridgeport was built in 1914. It was the residence of Morris I. Rome, a wholesale tea and coffee dealer.