Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Greek Revival

William Wheeler House (1850)

Capt. William Wheeler was a farmer and stonemason in Plainville who built his brownstone house on North Washington Street himself around 1850.

The pink Horace O. Adams House is on Broad Street in Plainville. This brick house, built in 1859, is transitional from the Greek Revival to the Italianate style, although there have been significant alterations to the building.

Alfred Hall House (1839)

Alfred Hall, a lawyer in Portland, was an executive at the Portland brownstone quarries and a grandson of their founder, Joel Hall. His house, on Main Street in Portland, has brownstone walls and was designed in the Greek Revival style by the influential architect A.J. Davis. Today, the house has been converted to serve as a bank.

Former Colchester Baptist Church (1836)

Before Colchester’s Baptist Church joined with the town’s Congregational Church to form the Colchester Federated Church in 1949, the Baptists worshiped in an 1836 church building, which is still standing at 168 South Main Street. The original steeple was destroyed in the 1938 hurricane and was replaced by the current shortened steeple. The congregation decided to sell the church due to their having a diminishing congregation by the 1940s. The church was sold to Nathan and Israel Liverant, who opened an antiques businesses in the old church and converted it to commercial use. The entrance originally featured a central window flanked by two entry doors, but now has a central door with bow windows on either side. Nathan Liverant and Son Antiques continues to occupy the building today.

The Catherine and Dency Parsons House (1832)

Built around 1832, the Catherine and Dency Parsons House, on Main Street in Durham, was built for two sisters around 1832. After 1868, the house was owned by the Parmelee family into the early twentieth century. The Greek Revival house has a shed-roofed porch along the front facade, added later. At one time the house had a stuccoed exterior.

Harmon Hamlin House (1809)

The Harmon Hamlin House, on Dowd Avenue in Canton, was built in 1809. For many years it was known as the Biglow House after a tin peddler who lived there. The house has Greek Revival features, probably added in the mid-nineteenth century, including a wide cornice, pedimanted side gable and a doorway with pillasters, sidelights and a Greek entablature.

Marlborough Congregational Church (1842)

Beginning in 1736, residents of what would become Marlborough made repeated petitions to the Connecticut General Assembly to form their own Congregational Society, which was eventually incorporated in 1747. According to Miss Mary Hall, in the Memorial History of Hartford County (1886), “The society without doubt took its name from Marlborough, Mass.; the largest tax-payer in the society being David Bigelow, a representative of a family conspicuous in the history of the old town of Marlborough, Mass. Ezra Carter, another influential member of the new society, came from the same town.” A meeting house was begun in 1748 and, again quoting from Hall, “The work of framing, raising, and covering the house was now begun, the expense being defrayed by levying a tax of four shillings on the pound. A little later in the same year the windows were glazed. This seems to have exhausted their resources, and nothing more was done until April, 1754,” when a pulpit, seats and pews were installed. Work continued over the years, until the “painting and underpinning of the meetinig-house and the laying of its steps made this remarkable structure complete in 1803. It had been fifty-four years in building, and was finished by laying the corner-stone last.” The church was completed the same year Marlborough was incorporated as a town. By 1841, a new church was needed. The original was torn down and the current Marlborough Congregational Church building was constructed in 1842, just back from the site of its predecessor above South Main Street. The original steeple was toppled in the Hurricane of 1938 and and was rebuilt.