At 41 West Main Street in Meriden is a building which is faced with limestone and has elaborate Classical detailing. It was built in 1923 for the Meriden Electric Light Company and today houses a law office and a bail bond company (the building is across the street from a courthouse).
The Abraham Pierson School is a Colonial Revival-style elementary school located at 75 East Main Street in the center of Clinton. The school is named for Abraham Pierson, who was pastor of Clinton’s Congregational Church and, from 1701-1707, was the first rector of the Collegiate School, which later became Yale University. The Pierson School was built in 1932 on the original site (or next to the site) of the Morgan School, a private school founded in 1870 by Charles Morgan, a New York businessman and Clinton native. On the grounds of the school are statues of Pierson and Morgan, both sculpted in 1874 by Launt Thompson.
This is the 50th post for Middletown on Historic Buildings of Connecticut! The house at 144 Broad Street in Middletown was built in 1902-1903 as the Rectory of the Church of the Holy Trinity, located on an adjoining lot on Main Street. The first occupant of the house was Reverend Edward Campion Acheson, the church’s eighteenth rector, who was later the Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut. His son, Dean Acheson, later served as U.S. Secretary of State in the Truman administration. The house, designed by H. Hilliard Smith in the Colonial Revival style, was later converted into elderly residential apartments run by St. Luke’s Eldercare Services.
In 1880, the Laura Andrews Free Library and Benevolent Association was established in Thomaston with a gift from Seth E. Thomas, Jr. of New York in memory of his mother. A town library was established in 1898 and the Laura Andrews Free Library Association (as the Association had been renamed in 1882) loaned its library collection to the town. A building for the town library, designed by Griggs and Hunt, was constructed in 1900-1901 on land offered by Randall T. Andrews, a Thomas relative, worker at the Seth Thomas clock factory and an incorporator of the Laura Andrews Free Library Association. In 1906, Andrew Carnegie donated $1,700 to pay off the debt on the library building. In 1971, a new library building was constructed next to the old one. In the 1980s, the original Laura Andrews Library building was renovated as a children’s wing and connected to the 1971 structure.
Dating to 1922, Fire Station 2 of the Waterbury Fire Department is home to Truck 3 and Engine 2. The station is located at 519 E. Main Street.
In 1760, the parish of North Bolton (which became the Town of Vernon in 1808) was established, formed from the north part of Bolton and the east part of Windsor’s Second Ecclesiastical Society. The first meeting house of the parish was built in 1762 on what is now Sunnyview Drive. A new building was erected on the Hartford Turnpike in 1826 and was dedicated in 1827. In 1851, the church was moved back several feet. A steeple and columns were also added to the church at that time. In 1896 the church’s spire, which had decayed, was taken down. The spire was eventually replaced, but the Hurricane of 1938 blew down the steeple and damaged the church’s roof, necessitating that the spire again be restored in 1939. The entire building was destroyed by a fire on January 23, 1965. Services were held in the Vernon Elementary School while a new church was built, which opened on September 25, 1966. The new building of the First Congregational Church of Vernon was designed to be as much like the previous Greek Revival church as possible.
Knesseth Israel Synagogue was built in Ellington in 1913 by Congregation Knesseth Israel [“The Gathering of Israel”], an Orthodox congregation of Jewish farm families. The shul was designed in the Colonial Revival style by Leon Dobkin and was built partly with funds from the Jewish Colonization Association. Founded by Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a wealthy German-Jewish philanthropist, the JCA encouraged Orthodox Eastern European Jews to become farmers. Knesseth Israel Synagogue was moved in 1954 from its original location, at the corner of Abbott and Middle roads, to its current address at 226 Pinney Street.
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