Nathan Bulkley House (1750)

Like the Justin Hobart House and the Isaac Tucker House, the Nathan Bulkley House, built in 1750, survived the burning of Fairfield by the British in 1779. According to The Old Burying Ground of Fairfield, Conn. (1882), by Kate E. Perry, Nathan Bulkley “was deacon in the Congregational Church; a prominent man in town affairs, and Town Clerk for 82 consecutive years. He married Sarah, daughter of Joseph Perry, I. At the burning of Fairfield Nathan Bulkley owned the ‘Colonial home’ which descending to the second wife of the late Dr. J. T. Denison, is yet standing and In good repair.”

Brick Academy, Torrington (1835)

The Brick Academy in Torrington is an old school building, constructed around 1835. It was probably moved at some point to its current location on George Street, if it is the same Brick Academy as described in the History of Torrington (1878), by Rev. Samuel Orcutt. According to that book, the Brick Academy, “a three story building in Wolcottville south of the bridge on Main street, was built as a Union meeting house and academy, and was used for both purposes quite a number of years. It has been occupied as a manufactory, a store, and a Masonic Hall.” Today the building is a private home.

UCONN Health Center (1966)

The design for the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington was chosen in 1964 after an architectural competition. The winning design, by Vincent G. Kling and Associates of Philadelphia, features a circular main complex, with a central courtyard, shaped like an elongated S-curve. Construction began in 1966 on the academic wing and in 1969 on the John Dempsey Hospital. Additions to the massive structure were made in 1994 and the complete Health Center campus currently consists of 35 buildings. The building has many examples of public art within. A bill passed last year provides for the construction of a new patient bed tower. Funding has been an issue, though, for the Health Center in recent years.

Central Village Congregational Church (1846)

In 1845, members of the First Congregational Church of Plainfield who resided in the town’s Central Village formed a separate North Plainfield Ecclesiastical Society. They built the Central Village Congregational Church in 1846 on Main Street. In 1927, renovations were made to make room for an organ. The church‘s original steeple was lost in the 1938 hurricane and quickly replaced by the current one.

The Fisk Shailer House (1823)

Fisk Shailer built a traditional colonial-type house on Saybrook Road in Haddam at the time of his marriage in 1823. Shailer was killed in 1828 in an explosion at the Shailer & Hall Brownstone Quarry in Portland. In 1855, Shailer’s widow, Hope Ventres Shailer, daughter of John Ventres, Jr., sold the house to Carlos B. Tyler, whose family remained there until 1924. The house’s Colonial Revival front porch was added in the early twentieth century.

The John Ventres, Jr. House (1812)

John Ventres, Jr. House

John Ventres, Jr. built his house in the Shailerville section of Haddam between 1805, when he and his brother Samuel first acquired the land, and 1812, around the time John married his second wife, Anne Shailer. Ventres died in 1884 and his third wife, Mabel, sold the house to John’s son George in 1896. The house remained in the family until 1907. The original large center chimney was at some point replaced by two smaller brick chimneys. (more…)

The Ludlow Bull House (1828)

The house at 114 North Street in Litchfield was built in 1828 by Leonard Goodwin, a trustee of the Litchfield Female Academy. Ludlow Bull purchased the house in 1925 and in 1928 he completely remodeled it as his summer home in the Colonial Revival style. Ludlow Seguine Bull (1886–1954) was an Egyptologist who started Yale’s Egyptology program and was an associate curator of Ancient Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.