Greek Revival - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Alfred M. Bailey House (1853)

The section of Middlefield called Baileyville was named for the family which first settled the area in the late eighteenth century. A later member of that family was Alfred M. Bailey (1822-1885), who contributed to Middlefield’s industrial development in the nineteenth century. He established a button factory along Ellen Doyle Brook with Andrew Coe in the 1840s. He also constructed the Lake Beseck Dam, one of the earliest arch-gravity type dams ever built. Completed in 1848, the dam provided a regular water supply for the mills downstream all year long. Raised in 1852 and in 1870, each time by five feet, the dam was rebuilt in 1938. Bailey’s house, at 148 Baileyville Road, was built around 1853. It has a later Queen Anne/Italianate addition and side porch.

Second Eli Curtiss House (1840)

Eli Curtiss, a successful manufacturer of Panama hats in Watertown, married Alma Southmayd DeForest in 1832. Although Curtiss had a Greek Revival house, built in 1837 on North Street, he soon decided to erect a larger residence (c. 1840) at 90 DeForest Street on land his wife received from her father in 1839. The house is transitional in style, displaying Greek Revival corner pilasters and a Federal doorway. At one time the hip-roofed house also had a cupola.

Somers Congregational Church (2014)

The Somers Congregational Church began in 1827. The congregation’s first meeting house was located on the corner of Springfield and Stebbins Road, where the North Cemetery is today. After the first meeting house was destroyed by fire, a second one was built near the same location. By the time the third meeting house was built in 1840-1842, the center of town had shifted to the south, so the new building was constructed at what is now 599 Main Street. The Town of Somers agreed to contribute to the cost of the building, provided that space within could be used for town meetings. These meetings continued in the Foundation Room at the church until a separate town hall was built in 1950. Over the years the meeting house was expanded: Pilgrim Hall was moved from across the street and attached to the existing Meeting House in 1949 and a parish hall, the Bugbee Center, was built in 1960 as a separate building and later joined to the meeting house. On New Year’s Day, 2012 the 1840 meeting house section of the church was destroyed by fire. Plans were soon underway to rebuild the structure with a basically identical exterior appearance. Work began in September, 2012. In order to bring the building up to code, the congregation had to move the new building a few feet back from Main Street compared to its predecessor. The first service in the newly rebuilt sanctuary was held on Easter Sunday this year (2014). A new bell, designed to resemble the original made in 1850, was placed in the new building’s tower on May 1.

Cyrus C. Birdsey House (1850)

A farmer in Middlefield, Cyrus C. Birdsey was the son of John and Esther Coe Birdsey. In 1851 Cyrus married [Mary-]Jane Bacon and moved into the house at 30 Lyman Road, which had recently been built, probably in anticipation of Cyrus’ marriage. A Greek Revival house, it has a front gable end with an unusual diagonal clapboard pattern.

Seventh Day Baptist Church, Waterford (1860)

The Seventh Day Baptists organized their church in Waterford in 1784. As related in the History of New London (1860) by Frances Manwaring Caulkins:

The society of Sabbatarians, or seventh-day Baptists, of the Great Neck, Waterford, date their commencement from the year 1674. They remained for the space of a century, members of the Westerly and Hopkinton church, with which they first united, but were constituted a distinct church, Nov. 2d, 1784.

Rev. William L. Burdick, in his history of “The Eastern Association” that appeared in Vol. II of Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America (1910), quotes from an article by Prof. Wm. A. Rogers that appeared in the Seventh-day Baptist Quarterly:

The Church has had three places of worship. The first was built in 1710, and was situated on the brow of the hill on the east side of the Neck. and. seems to have been owned jointly with the First-day Baptist Church. The second meeting-house built by the Church was situated just north of the present one, and on the opposite side of the road. It was built in 1816; and it cost $859 more than the amount previously raised by subscription. The pews were sold Dec. 24. 1816, to meet this indebtedness. The present house of worship was built in 1860, upon the present location, and upon land donated by Dea. David Rogers. It cost $1,989.

The present address of the church is 206 Great Neck Road in Waterford.

Henry W. Skinner House (1860)

The Skinner family were wood turners in Middlefield in the nineteenth century. The house at 445 Main Street in Middlefield was built by Henry W. Skinner not far from his father Albert‘s turning shop, which was started in 1853 along the Beseck River. Henry’s grandfather, Horace, had also been a turner. Henry W. Skinner took over the family business after his father’s death in 1868. The year before, he had given his house to his mother Almira, who lived there until her death in 1882.

Stephen P. Polley House (1870)

The house at 350 Main Street in Cromwell was built around 1870 on land purchased by Stephen P. Polley in 1869. Born in Chatham (Portland), Polley and his brother, Hiram Nelson Polley, moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, along with Levi Austin Hart of Southington and established Hart & Polley, a machine shop and metals manufacturing company. Stephen P. Polley later returned to Connecticut and founded the Cromwell Dime Savings Bank in 1871. He served as Cromwell’s town clerk from 1872 to 1878 and again from 1879 to 1881. After he died in 1887, his widow Catherine (from North Carolina) lived in the house until her death in 1891.