The oldest section of the house at 490 Cherry Brook Road in Canton may date back to 1740s, when the land was owned by Thomas Phelps, the earliest known settler on the site, whose brother Benjamin may also have lived with him. Thomas’ grandson was Anson G. Phelps, the New York businessman who founded the town of Ansonia. For many years, going back at least to the 1950s, the property was home to Rusthall Kennels, and is now Cherry Brook Kennels.
The house at 22 Church Street in Hebron was built in 1806 for John Samuel Peters (1772-1858). A nephew of Rev. Samuel Peters, John S. Peters served as governor of Connecticut from 1831 to 1833.
The building at 135 Pearl Street at the corner of Lincoln Street in Middletown was built in 1892 as St. Luke’s Home for Destitute and Aged Women. The home had been established in 1865 and members of the Church of the Holy Trinity were instrumental in establishing the endowment. St. Luke’s Home was originally located in a house at the southwest corner of Court and Pearl Streets. A large legacy enabled the construction of the new building, which had quarters for fourteen women. A new wing addition was constructed and other alterations made in about 1925. In the 1970s the Home moved to new quarters behind the Rectory of the Church of the Holy Trinity and in 1981 the building on Pearl Street was converted into nine apartments.
The Opera House in Bethel, located at 186 Greenwood Avenue, was built in 1860 [or perhaps as early as 1848?] by Augustus A. Fisher, a hat manufacturer. It housed a hat factory on the first floor, with a public hall above known as Fisher’s Hall. After a fire damaged the roof in the late nineteenth century, it was replaced with the current broad-eaved roof with Italianate brackets. The building later became Nichols’ Opera House, named after John F. Nichols, who ran it as an entertainment complex, with theater, roller skating rink and billiards. After his death in 1918, Daniel Brandon used the lower floor of the building as a brush factory and showed silent movies upstairs in what was called the Barnum Theatre. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was called Leeja Hall and was used for town meetings and as a high school gym. Since that time, the building has been used by various businesses, with an art gallery and later a photography studio above and a restaurant below.
Around the time of his first marriage in 1732, Joseph Stevens (1711-1801) erected the house at 1212 Main Street in Glastonbury on land he had inherited from his father, Rev. Timothy Stevens. Around 1982, the original gambrel roof slope of the front façade was raised to two full stories, but the rear of the house still maintains a gambrel roof profile. The house remained in the Stevens family until 1804 and was later owned by Dr. John Wheat (1779-1831).
Organized in 1866 by hatmakers and merchants, the Union Savings Bank of Danbury has been located in the Louis Sullivan-inspired building at 226-228 Main Street since it was erected in 1887.
John Gallup, a carpenter-builder, may have erected the house he owned at 23 Gravel Street in Mystic. Built in 1837, the Greek revival-style house had alterations in the Italianate style in later years, but was restored to its original appearance in the 1970s. A house constructed by Gallup’s brother James, also a builder, is located nearby, at 32 Pearl Street.
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