Architectural Style - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Fletcher-Fenner Homestead (1755)

Around 1739, John Fletcher (d. 1788) and his wife, Rachel Wing Fletcher (1697-1778) (they married in 1720 in Harwich, Massachusetts), settled in the village of Wormwood Hill in Mandfield. By the mid-1750s they had built the central-chimney house at 611 Wormwood Hill Road. According to Wormwood Hill: Its Settlement and Growth (2009) by Rudy J. Favretti and Isabelle K. Atwood, John Fletcher became wealthy purchasing and selling various pieces of land. His son John possibly lived in the house, which then passed to his younger brother, Capt. Richard Fletcher (1736-1812), who sold it in 1806. It then had other owners. In 1843 it was acquired by Amos G. Fenner (1807-1882), a farmer originally from Warwick, Rhode Island. His son William (1837-1918) and daughter-in-law Damorous Anstice Holley Fenner (1835-1907) later lived in the house and turned the south lawn into a croquet court. In 1913, their son Frank E. Fenner (1865-1933), who lived in Waterbury, sold the house to his cousin, George Silas Clark (1869-1938). In 1954, it was purchased by H. John Thorkelson (d. 2003), an economics professor at UCONN, and his wife Virginia, is now the home of their son, Peter Tork, formerly of the band The Monkees.

Howell-Baldwin House (1757)

The house at 79 Elm Street in Ansonia was built in 1754 by Joseph Howell. It was later the home of Dr. Silas Baldwin (1729-1813), Derby’s third physician (Ansonia was at that time part of the town of Derby). He married Mary Plumb of Ridgefield in 1755. According to the Sixth Report of the National Society of the Daughter of the American Revolution (1904):

Dr. Silas Baldwin, Revolutionary patriot […] Assisted in establishing American independence while acting in the capacity of a patriot. He accepted the oath of fidelity to the United States April 13, 1778. Dr. Silas Baldwin enlisted June, 1776, in Captain Johnson’s company Fifth Battalion, Wadsworth’s brigade, Colonel Douglas’s regiment to reenforce Washington’s army at New York; August 29-30, 1776, engaged in the retreat to New York; was at the battle of White Plains October 28. Term expired December 26. (History of Derby, p. 187.)

No. 24 on muster roll of Capt. Elijah Humphrey’s company, Connecticut Regiment of Foot, commanded by Col. Return Jonathan Meigs, was Silas Baldwin, enlisting March 27,1777, “on command,” which maybe received in explanation of the record on page 208, Connecticut Men in the Revolution, which says: “Silas Baldwin in Humphrey’s company, Connecticut Line, enlisted March 27,1777; deserted August, 1779.” (Connecticut Men in the Revolution, pp. 208, 407; muster roll of Capt. Elijah Humphrey’s company. Copy deposited.)

Dr. Silas Baldwin was born in Waterbury and died in Ridgefield, but generally resided in the section of Derby that is now Ansonia. He is buried in Ansonia’s Colonial Cemetery. (more…)

Albert B Wildman House (1852)

William E. Weld, a builder of many homes in Guilford in the nineteenth century, built the house at 88 Boston Street for Albert B. Wildman in 1852. Albert Boardman Wildman (1810-1878) was a merchant whose store was at 11 Boston Street (also built by Weld). Wildman was eulogized by Henry Pynchon Robinson in Guilford Portraits (1907):

ALBERT BOARDMAN WILDMAN.
June 2, 1810—May 2, 1878.
He stood uprightly tall and manly fair,
And wore on his smooth face the higher air
Of honor and proved probity, unswerving.
It seemed quite natural nor needed nerving
From sermon or from motive practical;
The gift, its own reward, more actual.
He was a merchant, of an older time,
When six pence passed by candlelight for dime.
Tuttle he knew and loved and linked the name
With his; merchants of good report and fame,
Successful through their dealing days and lives.
Not such as bold and meritless connives
To seize and turn the common weal to woe,
But sought by willing suffrage he did go
And added Guilford to the common sense;
Then through the war he served by son and pence.
His manner frank and fair and mild and genial,
As fellow man, well would treat a menial.
A father of the town, he walked our ways
And then from life retreated, full of praise.

Walker Hall (Former Watertown Library) (1883)

The Watertown Library Association was established in 1865. First opened in the Academy on The Green and then occupying rented quarters above F.N. Barton’s Store on Woodbury Road, the library moved into its own building in 1883. A Richardsonian Romanesque structure at 50 DeForest Street, it was designed by Robert W. Hill of Waterbury. Dr. John Deforest had given the library $5000 in 1876 for a book fund and his brother, the merchant Benjamin DeForest, helped to fund the construction of the new library with a donation of $15,000 (pdf). The library moved into a modern building on Main Street in 1958. The former library building then became Our Savior Lutheran Church. It has more recently been purchased by the Taft School. Called Walker Hall, it is used as a performing arts space and chapel.

I. S. Spencer & Sons Foundry (1869)

In 1851 Israel Stowe Spencer purchased an iron foundry on Fair Street in Guilford. The company Spencer founded, I. S. Spencer’s Sons (his sons, Christopher and George B. Spencer joined him in 1857), added a brick foundry to the property in 1869. It was enlarged in 1880. The company produced cast iron products, such as legs for school desks, lamp pedestals and bicycle parts. Frederick C. Spencer, I. S. Spencer‘s grandson, built the tower at the south end of the building in 1910. The company ceased operations in 1982. The building was converted into condominiums in 1987. Its former address was 20 Fair Street and is now 18 Fair Street.

Berlin Congregational Church (1850)

The earliest Congregational church in Berlin was formed in 1712 as the Second Church of Farmington, later the Kensington Congregational Church. In 1772, the congregation divided into the separate East (Kensington) and West (Worthington) Societies. Two years later, the Worthington Society built its meetinghouse on Worthington Ridge. It would later become known as the Second Congregational Church of Berlin (the Kensington Church being the first) and then the Berlin Congregational Church. After the building was damaged by a fire in 1848, a new meetinghouse was constructed (c. 1850) in the Gothic style. The spire originally had four gabled dormers. The clock in the steeple was donated by town historian, Catharine M. North, in memory of her father, Deacon Alfred North. The church is located at 878 Worthington Ridge.

Hartford National Bank & Trust Company (1967)

The twenty-six-floor office tower at 777 Main Street in Hartford (at the corner of Pearl Street) was built between 1964 and 1967 as the headquarters of the Hartford National Bank & Trust Company. The city’s oldest bank, the Hartford National Bank, had its origins on this very same block back in 1792. From 1811 to 1912, the bank was located in a Greek Revival building on State Street. It then moved to a new building (demolished in 1990) at the corner of Main and Asylum Streets (considered to be Hartford’s first skyscraper). In 1915 it became the Hartford-Aetna National Bank. It merged with the United States Security Trust Company in 1927 to become the Hartford National Bank and Trust. At that point, the bank moved to the United States Security Trust Company’s building, located at the corner of Main and Pearl, which had been built for the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1870. This building was demolished in 1964, along with the neighboring State Bank and Phoenix Bank buildings, to make way for the current office tower on the site. Designed by Welton Becket and Associates of New York, the building has gone by several names through various bank mergers: Shawmut, Fleet and, most recently, Bank of America. Vacant since 2011 and up for sale, plans are being discussed to convert the building into into mixed-income apartments.