Designed by James Gamble Rogers, the Hall of Graduate Studies at Yale University in New Haven was built in 1930-1932. The central tower contains graduate student residences, while the surrounding buildings are home to the administrative offices of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, several academic departments, the McDougal Graduate Student Center, classrooms and a dining hall.
The Thomas Ryley House, at 44 Pearl Street in Mystic, was built in 1859. It is a Gothic Revival-style house that also has Italianate overhanging roofs with brackets.
By the later 1860s, Academy Hall had become the place of Sunday Catholic worship in Plymouth Hollow, which later became the Town of Thomaston. St. Thomas Parish was established early in 1869 and the first resident pastor was appointed in 1871. A basement chapel opened in 1872, and the completed church was dedicated in 1876, built on land donated by Aaron Thomas, son of the clockmaker Seth Thomas. By the turn of the century, the growth of the parish led to the need for a larger church. The current church was built between 1906 and 1908 at the intersection of East Main and North Main Streets.
Durfee Hall on Yale University’s Old Campus was built in 1870-1871. Designed by Russell Sturgis, it was Yale’s first dormitory built of stone. Constructed as a memorial for Bradford M. C. Durfee of Fall River, Mass., the building is now used to house first-year students of Morse College.
At the northern end of Main Street in Middletown is St. John’s Square, where two impressive structures, St. John’s Roman Catholic Church and St. John’s School, stand side-by-side. The church, the oldest in the Diocese of Norwich, was built in 1852, replacing an earlier brick church, constructed in 1843 by builder Barzillai Sage. The new church was built of brownstone, which was donated by the Portland quarries. Lots in the cemetery behind the church were given for free with a $20 donation to the church, which added to the building fund. The tower and spire were completed in 1864, the same year a church Rectory was built to the east of the church. Next to St. John’s Church is St. John’s Parochial School, built in 1887 and blessed in 1888. The building once had a belfry, which was replaced around 1900 with the current raised gable and cross. The church and the school are joined by an arch, which had earlier been attached on one side to the church and was then attached on the other side to the school.
Methodists in Rocky Hill built their first church in 1859. When that church burned to the ground on Valentine’s Day 1895, the ladies of the sewing society only had time to save an 1814 Bible and a pair of altar chairs from the building. A new church was opened less than a year after the fire. Now called the Rocky Hill United Methodist Church, it is located at 626 Old Main Street, on the corner of Church Street. This Gothic Revival church has triangular window shapes instead of the pointed arches that are more typical of the style.
Meriden’s first Roman Catholic Mass was celebrated in 1843 or 1844 for the community’s growing Irish community. St. Rose of Lima became a parish in 1851. A new parish church, built on Center Street, was dedicated on July 31, 1859. The church‘s front facade once had a single steeple. It was later removed and replaced by the current facade, which has two matching towers. The church was formally consecrated in 1926. Since 1998, the parish has been staffed by by Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate Conception Province of St. Francis of Assisi.
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