Constructed in 1893, on Main Street in Wethersfield, the Keeney Memorial Cultural Center was originally a public school and later served as a court and a library. In 1985, the building was renovated with support from Mrs. William Keeney, becoming a cultural center named in honor of her son, Robert Allan Keeney, who was lost at age 21, when the U.S.S. Indianapolis was sunk in the final days of World War II. The Center houses the Wethersfield Historical Society.
Built in 1865 on Washington Street in Hartford, the Lucius Barbour House was once one of many such fine houses on the street. The others are now lost, but the Barbour House remains as an example of a mid-nineteenth century Italian Villa. Many alterations have been made to the house since it was built, including the enclosing of the front porch. In the 1890s, the house was inherited by Barbour’s son, Lucius A. Barbour, who was president of the Willimantic Linen Company. He updated the interior in the Colonial Revival style. His son, Lucius B. Barbour, as State Examiner of Public Records, directed the compilation of the Barbour Collection of Connecticut Vital Records, an important source for the study of genealogy. The first two floors of the Barbour House are currently the offices of a law firm, while the top floor is the home and studio of an artist.
Built in 1854 on South Main Street in Suffield by Dr. Aretus Rising, right next door to another house he built in 1846. This Italianate house has lattice-work columns.
The original Colt Armory was built in 1855 and was a central part of Samuel Colt‘s firearms-making empire. Based in the district of Hartford known as Coltsville, the armory was later joined by additional buildings, including housing for workers. The Colt mansion, Armsmear, was also built on a nearby hill, overlooking the factory complex. Three years after Colt’s death, the original armory was destroyed by fire in 1864. It was then rebuilt by Colt’s widow, Elizabeth Colt, using designs by the company’s general manager, General William B. Franklin. The new building was designed to be fireproof and also larger than its predecessor. It was also more decorative, with a design based on the styles of the Italian Renaissance.
The new Colt Armory also carried over the most dramatic feature of the original structure, the blue onion dome with gold stars, topped by a gold orb and a rampant colt, the original symbol of the Colt Manufacturing Company. Today, a gilded fiberglass replica is used, the gilded wood original now being displayed at the Museum of Connecticut History. As for Sam Colt‘s use of the famous onion dome, a distinctive feature easily noted by drivers on I-91, there are different theories concerning its origins, ranging from its being a tribute to his early Russian business contacts, to simply being a dramatic marketing statement which no one would forget. Coltsville is now undergoing plans for adaptive reuse and there is support for transforming the complex into a National Park.
Built in 1854 on High Street in Hartford, the Isham-Terry House is an Italian Villa-style home that was once surrounded by a residential neighborhood, now lost to urban renewal. Many drivers may notice this distinctive house, standing alone in its isolated position, as they go by on I-84. It was built for Ebenezer Roberts, a partner in a wholesale grocery firm with the Keney Brothers. In 1896 it was bought by Dr. Oliver K. Isham, who used it as both a home and doctor’s office. He lived there with his two sisters, Julia and Charlotte. The sisters continued to live there after his death, despite the vast changes to the neighborhood, remaining into the 1970s. In 1980, they willed the house to the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society, and today it is a historic house museum.
The house is notable for a variety of features. The tower to the rear was a later addition and has a third-floor window that awkwardly intersects with the main roof of the house. The house also has intricate cast iron work on the exterior balconies, ordered from the Pheonix Iron Works catalog of 1853 (Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney, two young machinists working for this Hartford company, would start their own company in 1860). The doorway features elaborate columns and stained glass. The inside of the house is virtually unchanged, remaining as the sisters left it, and thus represents a unique survival of a Victorian house interior, even including Dr. Isham’s undisturbed office.
Built in 1857 on Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford for Samuel Colt, Armsmear has been called “the grandest residence in the Hartford of its day.” Often attributed to the architect Octavius Jordan, it is an elaborate Italian Villa. It has been much altered from its original opulence, having lost such features as an ornate dome with an ogee shape, similar to that on the Colt Armory in Hartford. Also lost are the glass-domed conservatories, added in 1861-2 and inspired by London’s Crystal Palace. The mansion still features three towers, and Bill Hosley describes, in the Hog River Journal, convincing the director of the Wadsworth Atheneum to approve an exhibition on Colt’s Empire by showing him the view of Coltsville from the Armsmear’s main tower. Hosley describes the tower as “one of the most alluring historic spaces in Connecticut.”
After the death of Elizabeth Colt, the house was altered, according to her will, by Benjamin Wistar Morris to became a residence for the widows of Episcopalian ministers. 140 acres of the Colt estate were also given to the city of Hartford to create Colt Park. Today Armsmear is described as a “51 unit apartment complex for retired single women.”
Built in 1860 on South Main Street in Suffield by the tobacco baron John Welles Loomis for his son, George W. Loomis. In 1912, a group of Polish residents bought the Italianate house, which now serves as the rectory for the adjacent St. Joseph’s Church. Behind the house is St. Joseph’s Convent.
