Goodwin Building (1881)

Today, all that remains of the Goodwin Building, on Asylum Street in Hartford, are the outer walls, with their striking English Queen Anne facade utilizing ornamental terra cotta. Built in 1881 as an apartment building by the brothers, James J. Goodwin and Rev. Francis Goodwin, it was designed by Francis Kimball and was modeled on buildings Rev. Goodwin had seen being constructed at the time in England. Kimball, of the firm of Kimball & Wisedell, was the architect for the Day House in Hartford, which also has an English Queen Anne design. The Goodwin Building was expanded in 1891 to Ann Street and in 1900 to Pearl Street. It was a very prestigious address at the time, with even J.P. Morgan living there during his visits to the city of his birth. In 1985-1986, the building’s Arts and Crafts style interior was gutted to prepare for the structure’s incorporation into a new office tower, Goodwin Square, completed in 1989. That same year, the Goodwin Hotel opened in the former apartment building. The hotel closed in 2008 and last year Goodwin Square went into foreclosure.

Tower on Fox Hill (1939)

The War Memorial Tower on Fox Hill in Rockville, Vernon, was constructed between 1937 and 1939 as a memorial to Veterans of all wars from the town of Vernon. Before it was built, an earlier tower made of wood had stood on the site. Built by a Mr. Jeffrey of Meriden, it stood from 1878 until it was destroyed in a blizzard in 1880. Visitors were charged 15¢ to climb the tower and use the telescope at the top. The ruined building was not restored, but around 1889 the artist Charles Ethan Porter, Jeffrey’s brother-in-law, was using the surviving first floor as his studio. By 1923, the last remains of the structure had disappeared. The new Memorial Tower, built of stone, was designed by Walter B. Chambers of New York and was modeled after a 1500 year-old Romanesque tower near Poitiers, France. The WPA provided the labor and materials. The Tower is in Henry Park, named for E. Stevens Henry, a merchant and politician, who bequeathed Fox Hill and the surrounding area to the city of Rockville.

Truman Kellogg House (1838)

In his 1860 History of Harwinton, R. Manning Chipman writes that “Mercantile business, for the greater part of the last fifty or sixty years, has in Harwinton been transacted at from three to five stores under the care of four or more owners.” One of these owners was Truman Kellogg, who worked with various business partners over the years. Kellogg’s Greek Revival-style house in Harwinton was built around 1838 and has two main entrances, one facing Litchfield Road and the other North Road. In 1853, a sermon was published by Rev. Warren G. Jones, the Harwinton Congregational Church‘s seventh pastor, under the title: An Assured Hope: a Funeral Sermon, Preached on the Occasion of the Death of Truman Kellogg, who Departed this Life December 31st, 1852, aged 64 years. At Harwinton, Conn.