The Elisha Parish-James M. Jones House is a double house at 404-412 Atlantic Street in Bridgeport. The house originally had 2-story verandas on either side of the structure’s front pavilion, which has double bay windows. The verandas on the east side remain, but those on the west side were rebuilt and enclosed in the the mid-twentieth century.
The Ecclesiastical Society of Poquonock in Windsor was first established in 1726 and a meeting house was built the following year. This was replaced by a second meeting house in 1798. By 1820, church membership had completely diminished, but in the 1840s a new Congregational Church of Poquonock was formed (now the Poquonock Community Church), which built a new meeting house in 1854. The old Society’s church was eventually torn down in 1882, but in 1893-1894 a mortuary chapel for the adjacent Elm Grove Cemetery (earliest stone 1738) was constructed on the same site.
John Rogers, known as “the people’s sculptor,” was the most popular sculptor in America in the later nineteenth century, proucing relatively inexpensive works that filled the parlors of many Victorian-era homes. Rogers built his studio in New Canaan in 1878. His house in New Canaan, which was his residence until his death in 1904, was demolished in 1960. Rogers’ studio, which resembles a Victorian cottage, was saved and moved one lot away from its original location by the New Canaan Historical Society. It is now a museum displaying a large collection of Rogers‘ famous groups of plaster statuary.
The house at 60 West Main Street in Chester was one of several in town built by George M. Abbey (1835-1906), a carpenter and builder. In 1858, he had married Lois A. Brooks (1826-1917). This house, built in 1889, was owned by their son, G. Myron Abbey (1865-1922).
Frederick Henry Cossitt was born in Granby in 1811, but later settled for a time in Memphis, Tennessee, where he ran a wholesale dry goods business. In 1859, he moved to New York, where he was involved in real estate, insurance, and banking. Before he died in 1887, Cossitt had expressed a desire to build libraries in both Granby and Memphis and his heirs carried out his wishes. The Cossitt Library in Memphis was built in 1893. The other Cossitt Library, at 388 North Granby Road in Granby, was built in 1891, across the street from the house where Cossitt had been born eighty years before. The library has recently been renovated to reinforce the main floor and reconstruct the ground floor entrance. Cossitt’s daughter Helen married Augustus D. Juilliard and on their deaths, the couple left $12 million to found what would become the Julliard School.
An 1886 Queen Anne residence, the Wilbur E. Drake House is located on Main Street in the Pine Meadow section of New Hartford. Drake worked for the H. Chapin & Sons toolmaking company and married Julia Wilcox, niece of his employer’s wife, Mrs. Edward M. Chapin. Edward Chapin presented the land for the house to Drake upon his marriage.
On Tolland Green is located the Old Tolland County Jail, the earliest surviving section of which dates to 1856. At one time the Jail was attached to a hotel known as the County House (first built in 1786), which could accommodate people who had business at the nearby county court. The hotel was owned by the state, but was managed under contract by a private innkeeper (who was sometimes also the jailer). The court later moved to Rockville in 1888 and the hotel was not rebuilt after it burned in 1893. Instead, it was replaced by a new County House, used primarily as a residence for the jailer and his family. The Victorian building was designed by local builder James Clough. Today, the house and attached jail serve as a museum, operated by the Tolland Historical Society.
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