Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Greek Revival

United Methodist Church, Portland (1853)

Portland’s United Methodist Church, originally known as the Methodist Episcopal Church, was built in 1853. In the preceding year, Rev. F.W. Bill became Portland’s first settled Methodist minister who began the subscription to build the church, which would be completed under his successors.

C. Barber House (1835)

Possibly built by Chauncey Barber, the c.1835 C. Barber House, on Barber Hill Road in East Windsor, is a Greek Revival structure with a side-gable wing. The property has several nineteenth century outbuildings which may have been used for blacksmithing.

Moor’s Charity School (1755)

“One hundred years ago, a man of worth,
With a big heart–Old Windham gave him birth–
Started in Lebanon–Columbia now the name–
A little school the forest sons to tame:“

So run four lines from a poem by Dr. O.B. Lyman in honor of Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, the founder of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The origins of that college began in 1754 in a part of Lebanon which is now the town of Columbia. Rev. Wheelock, an important minister of the Great Awakening, founded a school called Moor’s Charity School, which was dedicated to providing a Christian education for Native American Indians who might serve as missionaries to the Indian tribes. A 1755 school building, used by Wheelock, survives in the town of Lebanon today, although it was later altered in the Greek Revival style. Eventually, as Wheelock was having difficulties recruiting Indian students due to the school’s distance from tribal lands and as he also wished to expand his school to include a college for whites, he decided to move the institution. In 1770, the move to New Hampshire was completed, a year after receiving a royal charter, the last to found a college in Colonial America before the Revolution. For this reason, the Moor’s Charity School in Lebanon was described, in a 1969 plaque placed on the side of the building, as “Proudly remembered for two hundred years by generations of Dartmouth men as seeding ground of Dartmouth College and faithful steward of Eleazar Wheelock’s generous and crusading spirit.”

The Exchange Building (1832)

The Exchange Building, on Church Street across from New Haven Green, was built in 1832 to serve as a commercial structure with a simple repeated Greek Revival window pattern. The builder, Atwater Treat, may have followed a design of Ithiel Town. The Exchange, New Haven’s first building constructed specifically as a commercial one, featured an open ground floor for shops. The building had a number of later changes, including the removal of the original cupola, which was eventually replaced by a billboard. In 1990, the building was restored, with a rebuilt cupola and and stone columned facade on the ground floor.

South Center District School #2 (1867)

Built in 1867, the South Center District School #2, on Main Street in Woodbury, was used for classes until 1900. In 1977, the building was acquired by the neighboring King Solomon’s Lodge and presented to the Old Woodbury Historical Society. By 1984, the building was restored and is now a museum, where every year second graders from the Regional School District #14 can experience classes conducted in a nineteenth-century one-room schoolhouse.

Edward Savage House (1837)

The Greek Revival-style home of Edward Savage, on Main Street in Cromwell, was built in 1837. Savage had inherited half of his father’s farm and then bought the other half from his brother. He was also involved with manufacturing, founding the Savage Revolving Firearms Co. in 1858. The house was later significantly altered, with the addition of the cupola, porches and a new wing on the north side. Some of these changes were probably in response to the popularity of the Italianate style on Cromwell’s Main Street in the 1850s and 1860s.

Edward Augustus Russell House (1842)

Edward Augustus Russell was the brother of the Middletown merchant Samuel Russell. Edward A. Russell served as mayor of Middletown and a state representative. His Greek Revival-style house was built on High Street in Middletown in 1841-1842, next to his brother’s home of 1828. Like the Samuel Russell House, Edward’s house may have been designed by the important architect Ithiel Town. Significant alterations were made when a third floor was added in 1930.