Winsted Bank (1851)

Sometime between the evening of Saturday, November 9 and the morning of Monday, November 11, 1861, robbers stole approximately $60,000, from the Winsted Bank. About $8,000 of this was in specie (gold and silver) and the rest included miscellaneous bills and treasury notes. The bank had been formed in 1848 (making it the second oldest bank in Litchfield County after the branch of the Phoenix Bank of Hartford on North Street in Litchfield) and the bank building was erected at 690 Main Street in 1851. Many of the stolen bills were Winsted Bank notes and the loss from the robbery led to the bank having insufficient net worth to receive a federal bank charter. The bank closed in 1864 and the building was acquired by the Winsted Savings Bank in 1867.

(more…)

Whaler’s Inn – Hoxie House (2002)

In 2002, the Whaler’s Inn in Mystic erected a building at the corner of East Main and Cottrell Streets, on the site of an earlier hotel, the Hoxie House, which opened in 1861. The Hoxie House, built by Benjamin F. Hoxie, had replaced an earlier commercial and lodging building, called the U. S. Hotel, erected by Nathaniel Clift in 1818. The U. S. Hotel building had burned down in 1858 and the old Hoxie House building burned down in 1975. The new Hoxie House reflects the Italianate style of the original Hoxie House, featuring a cupola and decorative brackets.

First Congregational Church of Bethel (1866)

The First Congregational Church of Bethel was first organized in 1759. Captain Ebenezer Hickok gave the land for the first meeting house (built in 1760) and burial ground. The original building, located at the intersection of Main, Maple, and Chestnut Streets, burned down in 1842, and a new building (the Second Meeting House) was constructed. In 1865, during a severe thunderstorm and gale force wind, the steeple fell and broke through the building’s roof. The church chose to sell the building (it’s now the home of the Bethel Historical Society) to the town and erect a new meeting house, which still stands today, on the site of the original meeting house, at 46 Main Street.