Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Greek Revival

The Mason-Knowlton Place (1829)

The Mason-Knowlton Place is a Greek Revival-style house on the Old Turnpike in the Four Corners district of Mansfield, probably built in the late 1820s. In 1864, it was purchased by John Chauncey Mason, who farmed the land and ran a nearby mill with his two sons. In 1879, Mason moved to a farm across the Turnpike and his son, Charles Mason, inherited the house. In the 1880s, Charles Mason added the front porch, using wood he had sawed at his mill. He also added additional rooms. After Mason’s widow’s death, in 1940, the house was owned by his daughter, Eva Belle Mason Knowlton, and her husband, Henry Knowlton, who ran an antiques business in the house. She died in 1983, at the age of 101. A biographical article on Eva Belle Mason can be downloaded.

First Congregational Church, Bristol (1832)

In 1742, when Bristol (known as New Cambridge) was still a part of Farmington, its residents received the privilege, from the Connecticut General Court, to have their own congregational services during the winter months. A seperate ecclesiastical society was formed in 1744 and the congregation settled its first minister in 1747. Their first meeting house was soon completed on Federal Hill Green, which had been chosen as the center of the new community. A school was completed in 1754 and, later, a second meeting house to replace the first. The current First Congregational Church is the third building on the site, constructed in 1832 at the intersection of Maple Street and Prospect Place. It was designed by Benjamin Palmer in the Greek Revival style, although the steeple has a Gothic elements.

Nehemiah Street House (1769)

Nehemiah Street, a tailor, built his house on Main Street in Farmington in 1769. He was robbed and killed in 1791 in Niagara Falls, where he had driven cattle to sell. In 1829, his house was bought by Leonard Winship, a cabinet maker, who updated the house in the Greek Revival style, altering the roof and adding the attic windows.

The Congregational Church in South Glastonbury (1836)

The Congregational Church in South Glastonbury was constructed on High Street in 1836 by 14 members of Glastonbury’s First Church. After the Great Hurricane of 1938, the other two Congregational churches in town had to be rebuilt, so South Church is the oldest surviving Congregational church in town. The building was raised and turned to face Main Street in 1965. (more…)

Asahel Nettleton House (1810)

In 1810, cigar-maker Nathaniel Rockwell, Jr. built a center-chimney house on Main Street in East Windsor Hill. Later facing debt, he sold the house in 1835 to Asahel Nettleton, who updated the house in the Greek Revival style. Nettleton, a minister and evangelist was a prominent figure of the Second Great Awakening. He participated in the New Lebanon Conference of 1827, where he and fellow Yale-graduate Lyman Beecher opposed the teachings of Charles Finney. In East Windsor Hill, he helped to found the Theological Institute of Connecticut and contributed proceeds from his volume of Village Hymns for Social Worship to help endow a professorship. Nettleton died in 1844, having willed his estate to the seminary, which later moved to Hartford. Nettleton’s colleague and East Windsor Hill neighbor, seminary professor and president Bennett Tyler, compiled a collection of Nettleton’s works and wrote a Memoir of the Life and Character of Rev. Asahel Nettleton, D.D.

Dr. Joshua Belden House (1722)

The Dr. Joshua Belden House, constructed in 1722, is located on Main Street in Newington. A center-chimney colonial house, it was updated in the Greek Revival style, with columns and pediment on the facade. Records show that Dr. Belden had two “bound” children, or indentured servants, in his household.

Elishama Brandegee House (1845)

Around 1845, Elishama Brandegee, Jr., a Berlin merchant with a strong interest in education, built a Greek Revival-style house on Worthington Ridge to serve as housing for the teacher at the Worthington Academy next door. It was later the home of his son, Dr. Elishama Brandegee. The Brandegees contributed to industry, founding East Berlin’s first silk and cotton thread company. Elishama Brandegee’s mother was also fascinated by the silk industry: she planted mulberry trees and raised silkworms.