Harwinton First District School (1840)

Harwinton’s first school was built in 1747 and was soon joined by two others. By the nineteenth century, Harwinton had 12 one-room district schoolhouses. The former First District Schoolhouse, built in 1840, was moved to its current location, across the street from the post office on Route 118, by the Harwinton Lions Club in 1972 and restored the following year by the Harwinton Historical Society. Behind the school is the Society’s barn museum, which displays tools used on farms in the town in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Thomas Howe House (1790)

Built around 1790, the Thomas Howe House, at the corner of Main and Church Streets in Stonington, remained in the Howe family until 1957. In 1887, when it was known as the “Aunt Mary Howe House,” it was rented for $100 a year by the Stonington Free Library Association. The house served as Stonington’s first library until 1899, when construction began on the current library building, located in in Wadawanuck Park.

Old Gungywamp (1670)

Gungywamp is an archaeological site in Groton, known for its stone chambers and double circle of stones. The builders of these structures and their function has yet to be definitively established. Old Gungywamp is a colonial saltbox house. It was built around 1670 near the Thames River in Groton, not far from the Gungywamp complex. It is also known as the Wood-Allyn House. In the 1920s, it was acquired by Elmer D. Keith, an antiquarian who was later the director of the WPA Federal Writer’s Project Census of Old Buildings in Connecticut and author of Some Notes on Early Connecticut Architecture (1938). In 1945, he moved Old Gungywamp from Groton to its current location at 892 Clintonville Road in Wallingford.

First Church of Christ Congregational, Clinton (1837)

The town of Clinton, originally known as Killingworth, established a congregational church society in 1667. The first meeting house, located in what would develop into Clinton Village, was built of logs and was succeeded by two others, built in 1700 and 1731. In 1735, a second church society was formed in the north part of Killingworth. This later society became a separate town in 1868 and retained the name Killingworth, while the south part became the town of Clinton. The current First Church in Clinton was built in 1837 in a different location than its predecessors: the top of Meeting House Hill, where it faces south and can be seen from Clinton harbor. Also on the hill, near the church, (to the left in the image above) is the Yale College Monument. From 1701 to 1707, Rev. Abraham Pierson, pastor of the church, taught classes of the Collegiate School in the part of Killingworth that would become Clinton. In 1716, the School moved to New Haven and was renamed Yale in 1718.

The Hartford Club (1904)

The Hartford Club

The Hartford Club was founded in 1873 as a union of several local clubs and soon developed a reputation as a literary club: Samuel Clemens joined in 1881. By the turn-of-the-century, the Club was focused on serving the political and business community of the state. In its early decades, the Hartford Club rented a series of increasingly larger spaces on Prospect Street. After merging with the Colonial Club in 1901, the enlarged Club built a new clubhouse at 46 Prospect Street. Designed by Robert D. Andrews of the architectural firm of Andrews, Jacques and Rantoul, the Georgian Revival clubhouse was opened in 1904. (more…)

Bryan-Downs House (1785)

The first residents of the Bryan-Downs House, originally located on the Post Road between Milford and New Haven, were Jehiel Bryan, Jr. wed Mary Treat, who were married in April, 1784. It was then the home of their daughter, Mary Esther, and her husband, Ebenezer Downs. Their son, Ebenezer Jr., inherited in 1837 and made a number of major changes to the house, replacing the original stone chimney with a smaller one and remodeling the interior. After Ebenezer’s death in 1873, the family rented out the house, which was later dismantled and stored for several years. In 1977, it was erected on the Milford Historical Society property, where today it forms part of the Wharf Lane complex of historic houses.