The house at 59 West Street in Seymour was built in 1940 as the home of Katharine Matthies, daughter of the Seymour industrialist, George Matthies. She was a philanthropist, who left as her legacy the Katharine Matthies Foundation, established following her death in 1987. Since 1995, the house has been the headquarters of the Seymour Historical Society.
Dedicated in 1930, Newtown’s Edmond Town Hall is a multipurpose building which, in addition to town offices, has a banquet hall, gymnasium, meeting rooms and even a movie theater, the only $2 movie theater in Connecticut. The building was the gift of Mary Elizabeth Hawley and was named after her maternal great grandfather, Judge William Edmond. Miss Hawley also donated the town’s Cyrenius H. Booth Library. Both the library and the town hall were designed by achitect Philip Sutherland.
Old Saybrook‘s Main Street School was built in 1936. In 1999, voters approved a referendum to convert it to serve as the new town hall. At the same time, restoration of the former town hall of 1911 was also approved and it has been restored as the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center.
A Young Men’s Christian Association was established in Waterbury in 1858. Association activities dwindled by the late 1870s, but the organization was revived in 1883 and officially incorporated in 1889, making it the oldest YMCA in Connecticut. The YMCA‘s rented space soon became inadequate and a new building was constructed on West Main Street in 1892-1893. It occupied part of what had been the land of Philo Brown, who had a house designed by Henry Austin. Philo Brown was head of the Brown and Brothers brass company. The first YMCA building was replaced in 1924 by the current Georgian Revival structure, designed by Richard Dana. The building was expanded with a new modern wing in 1971.
The current City Hall of Milford is the fifth in succession to occupy the same site. It was built in 1916 and was designed to resemble Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. It is located right along the Wepawaug River in downtown Milford.
Agudas Achim is a Orthodox Jewish congregation founded in Hartford in 1887 by immigrants from Romania. Meeting at first in private homes, the Congregation moved to a building on Market Street around 1902 and then to a larger synagogue on Greenfield Street, constructed in 1928. Like the similar Beth Hamedrash Hagodol on Garden Street, Agudas Achim (1928) was designed by the firm of Berenson & Moses. Following the movement of Jews out of Hartford’s Upper Albany neighborhood, the Congregation constructed a new synagogue on North Main Street in West Hartford in 1968. The 1928 building has since been a Baptist Church and is now the Glory Chapel International Cathedral.
Built in 1915-1916, Harwinton‘s Community Hall off Harwinton Green originally served as the town hall. Consisting of a brick story on a high granite ashlar foundation, this architecturally eclectic building features Greek columns and a very large Gothic pointed arch window. This structure replaced an earlier building from the 1840s, which had served as both town hall and Episcopal Church.
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