At 353 Main Street in Cromwell, between the First Congregational Church and the former Baptist Church building, is an Italianate house built around 1853. It was constructed for Rev. C.W. Potter, pastor of the Baptist Church, who had acquired the land to build the church and then built his own house next door. Rev. Potter sold the house when he left Cromwell in 1855.
Located at 31 Great Ring Road in Monroe, the Eliot Beardsley Homestead is colonial saltbox house, built around 1760. In 1993, it was purchased from the Town of Monroe by the Monroe Historical Society, which has been restoring the house as a living history museum and research library.
At 261 Broad Street in Windsor is the house built by John E. Luddy in 1921. Luddy, manager of the Connecticut Leaf Tobacco Association, was the founder of the Windsor Company, a textile manufacturer which produced shade cloth. This gauze-like cloth was used to protect the growing shade tobacco from the sun. Luddy also set up a trust fund to support the Connecticut Valley Tobacco Historical Society. Luddy’s house and carriage house were sold to the Town of Windsor in 1964 and today the Luddy House is home to the Windsor Chamber of Commerce.
The former South Park Methodist Episcopal Church, facing South Green in Hartford, was built in 1875. In 1886, the Boardman Chapel was added to the rear of the church, but has since been removed. In 1982, South Park Methodist Church merged with the United Methodist Church on Farmington Avenue. The 1875 South Green church was purchased by South Park Inn, Inc., which renovated the building and opened in in 1984 as an emergency homeless shelter.
Built in 1954-1957, the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company’s headquarters in Bloomfield (now known as the Wilde Building, for company president Frazer B. Wilde), was a pioneering example of an International Style suburban corporate structure. Designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, it was conceived as a modern campus with sophisticated amenities in a bucolic area. The skills of interior designer Florence Knoll and sculptor Isamu Noguchi were also called upon in the building’s creation. In 1982, CG and INA Corporation joined to form CIGNA, which proposed to demolish and replace the building with a new development in 1999. Preservationists acted to oppose these plans and the building was placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Eleven Most Endangered Historic Places list in 2001. CIGNA eventually decided to remain in the building and rehabilitate it. (more…)
The series of buildings at 235-257 Asylum Street in Hartford are valuable nineteenth century survivors, examples of a period when cast iron was popular as a decorative element on commercial buildings in the city. New York has its famous Cast Iron District in SoHo, but Hartford has a few examples of cast iron ornamentation from the same period, most notably the cast iron front added to the building at 105 Asylum Street in 1896. The three buildings at nos. 235-257 Asylum Street were built between 1870 and 1872 by John Harrison. As reported in the Courant on June 13, 1871:
John Harrison and his associates, who purchased a portion of the Shepherd property on Asylum street, will erect at the head of Ann street a five-story iron building, which will be the second iron front in that street when the improvements now going on are completed.
To the left, in the image above, is 235-237 Asylum, completed in 1871. The original cast iron front on the first two floors was later replaced, but has been retained on the upper three floors. The adjacent middle building, 241 Asylum, is a narrower structure, having three instead of four bays. The largest of the buildings, 247-257 Asylum on the right, dating to 1872, was constructed of brick. Its windows have cast iron architraves and the building is topped by a bold cornice featuring semicircular arches, a feature also used on the later McKone Block on Main Street, built in 1875. There are more pictures after the jump…
Fairfield’s Old Academy was a school founded in 1802 by a group of prominent local citizens. The schoolhouse itself was erected on the Old Post Road in Fairfield and opened in 1804. The original academy was in existence until around 1884. The building then served several purposes over the years, being used by a nearby private school and as a library and place for meetings. In 1920, the Old Academy was faced with demolition but the Eunice Dennie Burr Chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Fairfield Historical Society joined to save and restore the building, which was moved to the town green in 1958. Today the Old Academy is owned by the town and still used by the DAR. Opened to visitors several days a year, the building contains historical artifacts and the second floor is maintained as a replica of the old schoolroom.
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