Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Greek Revival

West Suffield Congregational Church (1840)

The origins of the West Suffield Congregational Church go back to 1743, when Suffield‘s Second Ecclesiastical Society was formed. Its first church building was constructed the following year, on what is now the southwestern corner of the West Suffield Cemetery. A second meeting house was constructed at the intersection of Mountain Road and North Grand Street in 1795, replaced by the current church, built on the same foundation, in 1839-1840. Church parlors were added in 1897 and an educational wing in 1958.

Joseph Remer House (1830)

Joseph Remer was a businessman and selectman in Derby. His house on Elm Street, in what is now Ansonia, was built around 1830 in the Greek Revival style, but has later additions, including an Italianate tower.

James Stokes House (1830)

The homestead of James Stokes is on Elm Street in Ansonia. The current house, completed around 1830, either replaced or incorporated an earlier one on the site, built in 1778. Stokes married Caroline Phelps, the daughter of Anson Greene Phelps, who founded Ansonia. Born in Simsbury, Phelps had become a successful businessman and manufacturer in New York. In the 1830s, Phelps joined with Sheldon Smith to found a manufacturing village in Derby called Birmingham (now the City of Derby). Facing obstacles in his attempts to expand Birmingham to the north in the 1840s, Phelps founded a new manufacturing settlement on the east bank of the Naugatuck River, in the older part of Derby which was named “Ansonia” after its founder. Phelps established a copper wire mill in 1845, which merged with Birmingham Copper Mills in 1854 and later became Ansonia Copper & Brass. Ansonia separated from Derby in 1889, later incorporating as a city in 1893. Anson G. Phelps was active in the Congregational Church and contributed to many philanthropic causes. His daughter, Caroline Phelps Stokes, and son-in-law, James Stokes, used their Ansonia house as a summer home and Anson Phelps often visited. Stokes’s son, Anson Phelps Stokes I, was a merchant, banker and multimillionaire; his grandson, Anson Phelps Stokes II, was a philanthropist; his great-grandson, Anson Phelps Stokes III, was an Episcopal Bishop. Another son of James Phelps was William Earl Dodge Stokes, a multimillionaire who developed much of New York’s Upper West Side and built a famous hotel called the Ansonia on Broadway. James Phelps’s daughter, Caroline Phelps Stokes, a philanthropist whose will established the Phelps-Stokes Fund, donated a library to the City of Ansonia.

John I. Howe House (1845)

As resident physician in the New York City Almshouse, Dr. John Ireland Howe observed how English residents laboriously made pins by hand. In 1831, Dr. Howe invented a pin-making machine and founded the Howe Manufacturing company in New York in 1835 to produce pins. In 1838, he moved the company to Birmingham, a section of Derby which would later become the City of Derby. The Howe Pin Company grew as Howe perfected his methods with additional patented inventions. In 1910, Howe‘s son donated his original Pin Machine to the Smithsonian. Howe’s stone house, constructed in 1845 on Caroline Street in Derby, was perhaps built by Lucius Hubbell, who constructed other stone houses in Derby and Shelton. The house, now owned by the Derby Historical Society, will eventually house the Lower Naugatuck Valley Industrial Heritage Center.

The Deming-Perkins House (1833)

In 1833, the Litchfield merchant Julius Deming had a Greek Revival style house built for his favorite daughter, Clarissa, on North Street. Clarissa Deming attended Sarah Pierce’s Litchfield Female Academy and married Charles Perkins, a lawyer who had studied at Tapping Reeve’s Litchfield Law School. Their son, Julius Deming Perkins, inherited the house and doubled its original size. The home remained in the Perkins family into the 1920s.

First Congregational Church in Bloomfield (1858)

For Thanksgiving, we focus on the First Congregational Church in Bloomfield. Originally established as the parish of Wintonbury, the first meetinghouse was erected in 1737 and the first official gathering was in 1738. A second meetinghouse was built in 1801 and served for 56 years before being moved aside for the current church building, built in 1858. Wintonbury had by then became the Town of Bloomfield in 1835. The church’s steeple blew down in 1862 and was replaced with a sturdier one that includes a clock.

Gurdon Trumbull House (1837)

Gurdon Trumbull, a Stonington merchant, was of the volunteers who defended the town during the British bombardment of 1814. He was also involved in developing the sealing and whaling industries in town and became a prominent citizen. His Greek Revival house on Main Street was built after the fire of 1837. Trumbull eventually moved to Hartford in 1852. He had several notable children, including the author Annie Trumbull Slosson, author of such books as Seven Dreamers (1890), Aunt Abby’s Neighbors (1902), Story-tell Lib (1911) and A Local Colorist (1912). His son, J. Hammond Trumbull, was a Connecticut Secretary of State and a scholar, who wrote The True-blue Laws Of Connecticut And New Haven And The False Blue-laws Invented By The Rev. Samuel Peters (1876). Another son, Henry Clay Trumbull, was a Congregational minister, chaplain of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment in the Civil War and author of such works as The Captured Scout of the Army of the James (1869), The Blood Covenant (1885), Studies in Oriental Social Life and Gleams from the East on the Sacred Page (1894) and The Salt Covenant (1899).

Also today, check out the latest entries at Historic Buildings of Massachusetts, the Francis Parkman House in Boston and the Ashley House in Deerfield.