John Northrop House (1871)

The house at 89 Main Street in Ivoryton was built in 1870-1871 by Samuel Merritt Comstock for John Northrop (1836-1897), to whom he sold it in 1874. Comstock was head of the ivory cutting business Comstock, Cheney & Co. Northrop was the company’s treasurer and in 1872 he married Comstock’s daughter Elizabeth (1840-1925). After her death, the house passed to Lucia Tully Chapman of New London, who sold it in 1929 to Laura Wright Wetmore, daughter of Northam Wight of the Connecticut Valley Manufacturing Company of Centerbrook. She was the wife of Edward Van Dyke Wetmore of the Essex Paint and Marine Company. The house was originally a Stick Style Victorian residence, but after 1930 it was altered to a colonial revival appearance.

Ward S. Jacobs House (1929)

The Colonial Revival house at 70 Terry Road in Hartford was built in 1929 and is currently home to the Gengras family (only the third family to live in the house). It was designed by the architectural firm of Smith & Bassette for Ward S. Jacobs. The architects’ plans for the house are in the collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, as well as a color film of the property from 1941 that shows Editha Jacobs tending to her garden and her husband, Ward S. Jacobs, mowing the lawn. Ward S. Jacobs was a mechanical engineer. In 1908, he acquired the patent and equipment for a device to remove broken taps, created by John Kinvall of Worchester, Massachusetts in 1902. Jacobs named his new enterprise the Walton Company, after the maiden name of his grandmother, Albina Walton Jacobs. He sold the business in 1936. The above photograph was taken in December, 2017, during the 37th Annual Friends of the Mark Twain House Holiday House Tour.

Danbury Post Office (1916)

The Post Office at 265 Main Street in Danbury was erected in 1915-1916. It was designed by Oscar Wenderoth, who was Supervising Architect of the U.S. Department of Treasury from 1912 to 1915, during which time he designed many federal building throughout the country. The Georgian Revival building, which has a stained oak interior, served as the city’s main post office until 1985, when a new main post office facility opened on Backus Avenue. Mail processing operations moved to the Backus location in 2007 and the Main Street office has continued as mostly a retail facility that also accepts mail and has over 800 P.O. boxes. With the Postal Service utilizing only a small portion of the large building, there have been concerns in recent years that the Main Street office might close. Local residents have voiced their support for a post office downtown, if not in the 1916 building, than at an alternative location on or near Main Street.

Fairchild Memorial Library (1925)

Before the Trumbull Library opened at 33 Quality Street on June 8, 1975, the town of Trumbull was served by three independent libraries: the Nichols Memorial (1923), Fairchild Memorial (1929), and Hawley Memorial (1937). These were merged under town administration in 1969. When plans were made to build that new library at a central location, two of the older libraries closed, but the Fairchild Memorial, now called the Fairchild-Nichols Memorial Library, remained as a branch of the new Trumbull Library System. Fairchild-Nichols began in 1922 as a lending library housed at the Old Firehouse. The library building at 1718 Huntington Turnpike was built in 1925 and the library opened in 1929.

636 Old Post Road, Fairfield (1954)

The Georgian Revival-style building at 636 Old Post Road in Fairfield was built in 1954 and housed the Fairfield Historical Society for half a century. In 2007 the Society erected a new building, the Fairfield Museum and History Center, at 370 Beach Road. Their former building is now owned by the neighboring First Congregational Church and houses the administrative offices of Operation Hope.

Copper Ledges (1924)

Copper Ledges is a Colonial Revival mansion in Bristol built in 1924 for Fuller F. Barnes (1887-1955). Barnes expanded the business started in 1857 by his grandfather, Wallace Barnes, who manufactured springs for clocks. Barnes and his brother, Henry, developed the company into the Associated Spring Corporation, which was organized in 1923 with Fuller Barnes as president. Associated Spring, part of the Barnes Group, would become the largest manufacturer of springs in the world.

The mansion stands on a prominent knoll at 60 Founders Drive, just southeast of the intersection of Stearns and Bradley Streets. Designed by local architect Henry Hayden, it was named Copper Ledges because the area is rich in copper. Extending to the south of the house are long formal gardens that end at a swimming pool and a dramatic loggia, erected in 1926. When it was constructed, the mansion was part of a 14-acre estate, which Barnes acquired in 1920. The Barnes family compound included the home of Fuller’s brother Henry Barnes, known as Chimney Crest, and various outbuildings. The estate has since been subdivided. Before he died, Fuller Barnes donated the house to Bristol Hospital, with the plan that it be made a convalescent home. The idea proved unworkable and the two Barnes houses instead became home to Laurel Crest Academy (later Laurel Crest Preparatory School), a private boys’ school, from 1960 to 1970. A girl’s school was added in 1970 and the name was changed to Devonshire-Laurel Crest, but the school closed in 1971. Copper Ledges is now a private residence. (more…)