Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Colonial Revival

Kellogg Lawn (1905)

Kellogg Lawn, 31 Union Street, Rockville

In addition to Maxwell Court, architect Charles A. Platt designed another mansion in Rockville for a member of the Maxwell family. At 31 Union Street is the William and Alice K. Maxwell House, known as Kellogg Lawn. The house was built in 1905-1906 for Francis and William Maxwell‘s mother, Harriet K. Maxwell, widow of George Maxwell. It was built in the center of Rockville, on a site where the house of Harriet’s father, George Kellogg, had once stood. Kellogg was one of Rockville’s pioneering industrialists. Today, the mansion is part of Rockwell General Hospital, serving as an entryway to the hospital.

Maxwell Court (1904)

The Francis T. Maxwell House, at 9 North Park Street in Rockville, Vernon, is a Colonial/Classical Revival mansion, built in 1902-1904. Maxwell was a part-owner of the Hockanum Mills Company. His mansion, known as Maxwell Court, was designed by Charles Adams Platt, who was renouned as an architect and as one of America’s most influential landscape designers. Platt’s design for Maxwell Court, his first large scale project, integrates the mansion and the surrounding landscape. The house is located on a hill above the city of Rockville, near the mills but with broad views to the south and west. With its architecture, gardens and landscape, influenced by the Villa Gamberaia near Florence, the Maxwell estate was influential in the American country house movement. Maxwell Court was featured in such contemporary publications as The Country House, a Practical Manual of the Planning and Construction of the American Country Home and its Surroundings (1906), by Charles Edward Hooper and House & Garden, Vol. IV, No. 4 (October 1903)–an article whose images were reproduced in American Country Homes and their Gardens (John Cordis Baker, ed. 1906). The plan of an estate, clearly modeled on Maxwell Court, appeared in Henry Vincent Hubbard and Theodora Kimball’s An Introduction of the Study of Landscape Design (orig. pub. 1917), the principle textbook for landscape architecture courses in the United States in the early twentieth century. Today, Maxwell Court is the Rockville Elks Lodge #1359. (more…)

Gilbert Brewster House (1800)

The house at 96 Union Street in Norwich was built in the Federal style around 1800 for Gilbert Brewster. It was later (around 1884) remodeled in the Georgian Revival style. Around 1910, an elevator was installed which continues to service the house. Read on to learn more about the house’s first resident, Gilbert Brewster… (more…)

Frank E. Wolcott House (1924)

At 26 West Hill Drive, in the West Hill Historic District in West Hartford, is a Colonial/Tudor Revival house, built in 1924 and designed by Smith & Bassette for Frank E. Wolcott. His manufacturing company produced the Silex coffee pot. A vacuum brewer, the Silex coffee pot, utilizing heatproof Pyrex glass, was first produced in 1915. The rights to its design, which originated in Europe, had been acquired in 1909 by two sisters, Mrs. Ann Bridges and Mrs. Sutton, of Salem, Massachusetts. Wolcott’s company was later renamed the Silex Company. Its first patent for a coffee pot was assigned to Hazel M. Bridges in 1926. Frank E. Wolcott filed additional patents in the 1930s.

Emanuel Synagogue (1927)

Formed in 1919, Emanuel Synagogue in Hartford was Connecticut’s first Conservative congregation. In 1920, members dedicated its first synagogue in the former North Methodist Church on Main Street. With a growing membership, the congregation purchased farmland on Woodland Street in Hartford’s Upper Albany neighborhood. A new synagogue, designed by Ebbets and Frid, was completed in 1927. Emanuel Synagogue’s cemetery is located on Jordan Lane in Wethersfield. By the 1950s, with many Emanuel members having moved to West Hartford, the synagogue purchased land on Mohegan Drive and built a social hall and religious school there in 1959. Services continued to be held at Woodland Street until 1968. A new Emanuel Synagogue was completed on Mohegan Drive in 1970. The former Hartford synagogue is now Faith Seventh Day Adventist Church.

Meriden B.P.O. Elks Lodge (1928)

Meriden Lodge No. 35, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was incorporated in 1909. The Meriden Lodge‘s current building, at 120 East Main Street, was built in 1928.

New Canaan Playhouse (1923)

The Playhouse in New Canaan is a 1923 movie theater at 89 Elm Street. Originally having a single screen, it was later converted to two screens and continues today as a first run movie theater, owned by the town but managed by Bow Tie Cinemas. This past year the Playhouse was renovated, with new seats and bathroom and a display case in the left front window, which had earlier been boarded up and painted white (as seen in the image above).