The house at 76 Lyme Street in Old Lyme was built in 1850 for Amos Bacon, a sea captain. From 1919 to 1959, the house was occupied by Charles Ebert (1873-1959) and his wife, Mary Roberts Ebert (1873-1956). They were impressionist painters who were part of the Cos Cob art colony in Greenwich before moving to Old Lyme in 1919.
The Archbold Building, on the campus of Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, was erected in 1928 and opened in 1929 as the school’s infirmary – the largest school infirmary in the country at the time. Designed by Ralph Adams Cram, the building was a gift of Anne Saunderson Archbold in recognition of the care her son received from Clara St. John, the headmaster’s wife, during a long illness when he was a student. After forty-five years as an infirmary, the building became a girl’s dormitory in the 1970s, when the school became co-ed. In 1998, the Archbold Building was renovated to incorporate the headmaster’s office and admissions offices, with dormitory housing on the upper of its three floors.
A sign on the house at 285 Bantam Lake Road in Morris names the building Holiday Farm and gives it a date of 1827. There are numerous postcards from the early twentieth century with images of the Holiday Farm House, described as being on the “West Shore, Bantam Lake,” indicating it was one of the numerous guest houses of the time where vacationers lodged by the lake. There was also a treehouse on the property.
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Yesterday I posted about the Gordon S. Miller Farm Museum in North Branford. The museum is located adjacent to the Historical Society’s Reynolds-Beers House and the Atwater Memorial Library. The oldest section of the Library was built in 1942-1943 on the site of the town’s old Training Ground. The library was built with funds left to the town by a grandson of the Rev. Charles Atwater, the third minister of the North Branford Congregational Church. An addition to the library was constructed in 1967.
One of the properties of the Totoket Historical Society in North Branford is the Gordon S. Miller Farm Museum. Housed in a traditional New England barn constructed in 2002, the museum collection contains farm machinery and farm implements used in Northford and North Branford going back over two centuries, as well as artifacts discovered in local archeological digs sponsored by the society. The museum is named for Gordon S. Miller, a long time resident of Northford and a former President of the Totoket Historical Society.
The Catholic parish in Pomfret began as a mission of Sacred Heart Church in West Thompson. Services were held in Pomfret Hall before Most Holy Trinity Church was erected in 1885-1887. The church originally stood on Woodstock Road. In 1973 it was moved to its current location at 568 Pomfret Street, at the intersection of Deerfield Road. A house already standing at the new property, built c. 1800 and remodeled in the Colonial Revival style c. 1890, became the church’s rectory.
The Connecticut Colony for Epileptics was established in Mansfield in 1909. At that time, it was believed that people with epilepsy should be segregated in a “colony” where there daily lives would be carefully regulated. The Colony was located in a rural area and included a farm that supplied the institution with food and provided occupational therapy. An older cross-gable brick farmhouse, built in 1870, became the Superintendent’s house. In 1917, the Colony merged with the Connecticut Training School for the Feeble-Minded in Lakeville and the resulting institution, the Mansfield Training School and Hospital, continued in operation until 1993. The school’s campus would grow to include over fifty buildings. The Superintendent’s house was remodeled in 1931 with the addition of two 2-story wings and an entry portico. The building later served as the Administration Building and then as the Physical Plant. When the school closed, some of the buildings were demolished and the rest were divided between the Bergin Correctional Institution and the University of Connecticut, which uses the property as its Depot Campus. The former Superintendent’s House is on what was the Bergin Correctional Institution‘s property at 251 Middle Turnpike (Route 44). The prison closed in 2011 and the land was transferred to UCONN in 2015.
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