Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Federal Style

First & Summerfield United Methodist Church (1849)

Designed by Henry Austin, the First Methodist Church, on College Street in New Haven, was built in 1849 in the late Federal style in a stylistic link with the nearby Center Church of 1814. In the ensuing years, the church was significantly altered, with many of the Federal features being removed. In 1904, after a fire, the church was repaired with a new portico and steeple, in a Federal Revival mode, designed by Charles C. Haight of New York, who also designed the Keney Memorial Clock Tower in Hartford. In 1981, First Methodist Church merged with Summerfield United Methodist Church, located in the Newhallville neighborhood of New Haven, to form the First & Summerfield United Methodist Church.

Gardner Mills House (1815)

Gardner Mills built his house at 225 Cherry Brook Road in Canton around 1815 on the site where his father, Amasa Mills, had built an earlier home. Amasa Mills had been a captain in the Continental Army and a colonel in the militia. In 1820, aged 85, he sought a veteran’s pension by testifying that he was unable to work as a blacksmith due to disabilities, lived alone in poverty and was dependent on others. Two neighbors contested this, saying he lived with his son, Gardner Mills, who had ample means to support his father and had received property from him. Amasa argued that the house and farm had been deeded to his son in payment for the father’s debts which Gardner had paid. A heated conflict eventually developed which divided members of the family and the community. Eventually, in 1821, congressman Elisha Phelps defended Amasa Mills’s version of the situation, but Amasa Mills died before receiving a pension. Gardener Mills, Sr. passed the house to his son, Gardner Mills, Jr.

The house was later acquired by Alfred F. Humphrey, whose wife was the daughter of Dr. Chauncey Griswold, inventor of a product called “Griswold’s Salve.” Griswold later came to live with his daughter and after he died, Albert Humphrey continued the business, which was eventually sold to the Sisson Drug Co. of Hartford. Members of the Humphrey family continued to own the house and in 1906, Sylvester Barbour, visiting Canton, met, among others (as related in his Reminiscences of 1908), “Mrs. Alfred F. Humphrey, daughter of that eminently good man, Dr. Chauncey G. Griswold, whose salve has been such a boon to society.” Barbour noted that Mrs. Humphrey was “nearly as sprightly as when I first knew her sixty years ago.” (more…)

Hiram G. Marvin House (1824)

The house built for Hiram G. Marvin, on Lyme Street in Old Lyme, is an 1824 Federal style structure with some Greek Revival influences. In 2007, the house became the first in Old Lyme to have an historical plaque from the Historic District Commission. Hiram G. Marvin had two brothers, one named Aaron Burr Marvin and the other named Alexander Hamilton Marvin (probably both born in the 1790s). I wonder if they got along later in life?

First National Bank of Litchfield (1816)

The First National Bank of Litchfield began in 1814 as a branch of the Phoenix Bank of Hartford. Benjamin Tallmadge was one of its founding directors. Its impressive Federal style building on North Street was built in 1816. The bank was reorganized as the First National Bank of Litchfield in 1864 and remains the oldest continuosly operating business in Litchfield and the oldest nationally chartered bank in Connecticut.

Roberts Homestead (1822)

The Roberts Homestead is an 1822 brick house, located across from the Town Green in Bloomfield. It was built by Lemuel Roberts. Later in the nineteenth century, owner Lester A. Roberts, who gave land to add to the Town Green, was described as “a man of unusually wide intelligence and some literary note,” who “is now a resident of Brooklyn, but still makes Bloomfield his summer home.”

Harvey Bissell House (1815)

Built around 1815, the Harvey Bissell House, on North Main Street in Suffield, is an elaborate example of the Federal style. Harvey Bissell, who married Arabella Leavitt in 1816, originally came from Windsor and became a successful shop keeper in Suffield. In 1846, he is listed as the town’s only retailer of wine and liquor.

Also today, check out the latest entries at Historic Buildings of Massachusetts, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House in Hadley and Sycamores in South Hadley.

Old Farm School (1796)

Constructed in Bloomfield in 1796, at the intersection of Park and School Streets, the brick Old Farm School served one of the seven school districts in what was then Windsor’s Wintonbury Parish. Before then, an earlier log building on the site from the 1730s had been used as a school house (it was eventually sold in 1815). Although originally built with two floors, the new brick building’s second floor classroom was only completed in 1829-30. The school closed in 1922, but the building continued to be used by the public, serving as a meeting place for the American Legion and Auxiliary Legion from 1931 to 1971. When the state planned to widen School Street, the Wintonbury Historical Society raised money and supervised the moving of the building to a new location across the street in 1976. In 1987 the first floor was restored and opened to the public as a museum, with the second floor following it in 1989.