James Carson House (1880)

Along with the Hotchkiss-Fyler House (1897), another house on the Fyler-Hotchkiss Estate is the Carson House, an Italianate residence. It was built in 1880 for James Carson, treasurer and partner of the Turner and Seymour Manufacturing Company and head of the Torrington Manufacturing Company. It was built on land that Carson had acquired from Orasmus R. Fyler. In 1892, he sold the property back to Fyler. Carson, suffering from Bright’s Disease, had suddenly retired. A few months later, after consulting a doctor in New York, Carson went missing from the train on which he had been returning home to Torrington. After the Fyler’s acquired his house, they rented it out to various tenants. Along with the rest of the estate, the Carson House was bequeathed by Gertrude Fyler Hotchkiss to the Torrington Historical Society. In 1975, the interior of the house was adapted to become museum exhibition space for the Society.

The Benjamin Hanks House (1780)

Benjamin Hanks, a drummer in the Revolutionary War, was a clockmaker and silversmith, known for his church bells, who settled in Litchfield from 1779 to 1790. He had his home and shop in a building at 39 South Street, built in 1780. Hanks later returned to practice his trade in his hometown of Mansfield and also set up a bell-casting foundry with his son in Troy, New York. His former double house in Litchfield served for a time as the Park Hotel.

William F. Baldwin House (1850)

The William F. Baldwin House, at 150 South Street in Litchfield, was built in 1850. In 1886, the house was acquired by Philadelphian F. Ratchford Starr, who ran Echo Farm, a commercial dairy he had begun in Litchfield. Around 1910, when the Colonial Revival influence had come to dominate in Litchfield, the house was altered, probably quite significantly, in that style, most likely by Starr’s daughter, who had inherited the property in 1889.

St. Francis of Assisi Church, Torrington (1887)

As the Irish population of Torrington grew in the mid-nineteenth century, a wood frame Catholic church was built on Main Street in 1859. St. Francis of Assisi mission became a parish in 1874 and on November 13, 1887, a new Gothic-style St. Francis of Assisi Church, replacing the earlier wooden one, was both dedicated and consecrated on the same day, allegedly the first instance of this dual ecclesiastical honor in the nation.

T. A. Hungerford Memorial Library (1909)

Theodore Alfred Hungerford, the son of a local merchant, was born in Harwinton in 1838. He later became successful in the New York publishing business. In 1903, Hungerford’s nephew, Newman Hungerford, convinced him to endow a library as his memorial in his home town. The T. A. Hungerford Memorial Library, including (according to legend) a tomb for Mr. Hungerford in the basement, was completed in 1909. Although it is no longer the town’s public library, it continues to serve as a museum of the town’s history, with a collection of artifacts begun by Newman Hungerford.

The Huvelle House (1953)

Next to Stillman House I, at the end of Beecher Lane in Litchfield, is another mid-century modern home called the Huvelle House. It was built in 1953 and designed by John Johansen on land land that had been split off from the neighboring Stillman property. Dr. C.H. Huvelle and his wife were the architect’s clients and a condition of Stillman’s land offer to them was that they build modern. Mrs. Huvelle continued to reside in the house until her death earlier this year.