The 1800 Benton-Hale House, on Main Street in Glastonbury, was built by Samuel Benton when he married Fanny Talcott. In 1838, the house was acquired by Frary Hale, “said to have been the first woolen manufacturer in Connecticut; he lived 90 years.” He also served as town clerk, 1848-1850. The house’s rear ell may be an earlier structure.
The Perkins-Rockwell House, on Rockwell Street in Norwich, is an interesting stone Federal Style house. It was built around 1818 by Joseph Perkins, a merchant and Revolutionary War soldier. The house was inherited by his daughter, Mary Watkinson Perkins, who married John Arnold Rockwell, a lawyer and politician, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives. The house was inherited, in 1924, by Mary Watkinson Rockwell Cole. Today it is a museum, operated by the Faith Trumbull Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
The Jude Hamilton House was constructed in 1802, on Main Street in Farmington. It is a brick, Federal style house and has a newer west wing added in the 1960s.
Located further south on Lyme Street in Old Lyme from the house of William Noyes, Jr. is a house built the same year (1817) and designed by the same architect (Samuel Belcher). The Federal style house, whose original carpenters were shipbuilders, was constructed for John Sill, a “customs runner” who secreted his smuggled goods in hidden closets in the house. With Sill’s arrest in 1820, the house was bought by William Noyes and in 1822 by Charles Johnson McCurdy, a Yale graduate, politician, ambassador and judge. In 1944, an extensive restoration was undertaken by owner C. Whitney Carpenter with the local architect, Robert I. Carter, who later bought the home. In 1983, the house was sold by Carter’s children to the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. It now houses offices and gallery space. More information can be found in this pdf file of River and Sound.
Across Lyme Street in Old Lyme from the Bee and Thistle Inn is the house Joseph Noyes had built for his son, Dr. Richard Noyes, in 1814, the year Richard married Martha Noyes of Stonington. The Colonial Revival dormer windows were added in 1922. The house remained in the Noyes family until the 1930s. From 1939 to 1946, the house was home to the Madison Military Academy, a college preparatory school for boys. Afterwards it was the White Farms Inn and is now a private residence.
This week we will look at some notable buildings on Lyme Street in Old Lyme. The most famous residence on the street is the Florence Griswold House. Originally built in 1817 for William Noyes, Jr., a son of Judge William Noyes, the house was designed by Hartford builder Samuel Belcher, who was already at work on Old Lyme’s Congregational Church. In 1839, the house was sold to Richard Ely and in 1841 to the sea captain Robert Griswold. His daughter, Florence Griswold, was born in 1850. “Miss Florence” and her sister Adele inherited the house but, left in a precarious financial position, had to take in borders. In 1899, artist Henry Ward Ranger boarded at the house and soon encouraged other artists to stay there. In the following years, a number of notable American Impressionist painters made the home the center of an artist’s colony. The artists included Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf, Matilda Browne, William Robinson and many others. Several of the artists painted panels in the house’s dining room.
By the 1930s, Florence Griswold was in debt and her property was sold, although the land’s new owner, Judge Robert McCurdy Marsh, who built a new house, allowed her to live in the old house until her death in 1937. In 1941, the house was purchased by the Florence Griswold Association and opened as a museum in 1947. In recent years, the Florece Griswold Museum has expanded, with the gift of the Hartford Steam Boiler and Inspection Company’s art collection in 2001, the construction of the Krieble Gallery in 2002 and the 2005-2006 restoration of the house, which is furnished as it would have been in 1910 at the height of the art colony. Edit: I’ve replaced my earlier image of the house with a new one!
Originally a private residence, built around 1800, the dorm of Miss Porter’s School called “Humphrey” is a Federal Style building which is connected to the “Colony” dorm by a “Senior Room” built in 1970.
