Joseph Skinner, one of the developers of Prospect Street in New London, erected the Greek Revival house at 7 Prospect sometime between 1838 and 1842. It is possibly the work of John Bishop, a notable local builder. The house’s bay window, bracketed window hoods and front porch are later additions.
The house at 283 Brewster Street in Black Rock, Bridgeport was built in 1840 for George Palmer, an oysterman. The house’s unusually high basement may have been used to store oysters for shipment. In 1850 the house was bought by Daniel Golding, who managed the mills at Ash Creek. He changed his name to Goldin for business reasons because the “g” at the end of his name wouldn’t fit on the barrels of flower that he produced. The house was in the Brady family from 1860 to 1950.
In 1845-1846, a Greek Revival flushboard-sided house was built at the corner of Hempstead and Granite Streets in New London for William Albertson, who owned a successful cotton gin manufactory. The house was located on the spot where the New London plantation’s first house of worship, a large barn, had stood in the seventeenth century. In the later nineteenth century, a cast iron front porch and Italianate bay windows and cupola were added to the Albertson House. In 1973, the house was moved to the corner of Channing and Vauxhall Street to make way for the construction of Saint Sophia Church.
Between 1838 and 1843, David Smith, a housewright from Greenfield Hill, built eight (mostly multi-family) houses along a street he had just opened up: Smith’s Lane (now Calderwood Court) in Black Rock, Bridgeport. This planned development also included a carriage factory and a school. The houses were transitional between the Federal and Greek Revival styles. The first of the houses to be built, in 1838, was the the William Bouton House at 4 (aka 25) Calderwood Court. The front porch is a twentieth-century addition.
The Greek Revival house at 317 Main Street South in Woodbury was built in 1838 as the rectory for St. Paul’s Church across the street. Although more recently used for storage, the house attracted attention last December when it was decorated to become the Designer Showcase House for the Woman’s Club of Woodbury’s Annual Holiday House Tour.
The house at 170 Water Street, on the west side of Wadawanuck Square in Stonington, was built in 1833 for Sarah Potter Denison Palmer (1785-1862), a decade after the death of her husband, Luke Palmer (1775-1822). Known as the Widow Luke Palmer House, it was described as follows in Grace Denison Wheeler’s The Homes of Our Ancestors in Stonington, Conn. (1903):
The Widow Luke Palmer’s house is one of the old landmarks although none of the older residents seem to know when this house was built; still it is known that Mr. Palmer married Sally P. Denison in 1804, and they lived there. She used to board the men connected with building the Stonington Railroad, Mr. Almy, Mr. Matthews and others, about 1835. The house has been so added to and improved that but little of the original can now be seen. It was owned by Mrs. William L. Palmer, and her heirs sold it to Mr. Henry Davis, whose heirs sold it to Miss Emma A. Smith, and in 1901, the Roman Catholic Society purchased it of her. At various times three clergymen have lived here: Rev. M. Willey, first Pastor of Calvary Church; Rev. R. S. Wilson, Pastor of the Baptist Church, and Rev. A. G. Palmer, who was so long the good minister of the Baptist Church.
Copper Hill United Methodist Church is located at 27 Copper Hill Road in East Granby. As related by Charles Horace Clarke in The Memorial History of Hartford County:
The Methodist church at Copper Hill was built in 1839, and in 1850 was thoroughly repaired, and moved about five rods westward. Like all Methodist churches, it has had regular changes of pastor. In the ministry of Lemuel Richardson, in 1871, there was an extensive revival of religion, attended with remarkable manifestations. The writer, at a single evening meeting in the church, which lasted from seven o’clock until midnight, witnessed as many as fifteen persons who became apparently unconscious. Some were stretched upon the floor; others were lying or being supported upon the seats. This visitation of “the Spirit” was regarded as a great blessing, and it certainly did strengthen the church in numbers. Mr. Richardson was a large, powerful man, full of strength, zeal, and boldness, and possessed of a strong, loud voice, which he used in singing as well as in preaching and prayer.
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