Comstock-Bensen House (1842)

The Comstock-Bensen House is a Greek Revival home at the northwest corner of Main Street and Heritage Hill Road in New Canaan. It was built around 1842 by Edson Bradley on land he had purchased from Seymour Comstock. Bradley was a partner in the shoe-making company of Bradley and Benedict. Business was disrupted by the Civil War and in 1871 Bradley retired and sold his home to Albert Comstock, the brother of Seymour Comstock, who lived next door. Albert Comstock was partner in the clothing business of Comstock and Rogers. He and his wife also helped to found the New Canaan Historical Society, whose early meetings were held in the couple’s house. The house later passed through other owners, being acquired by the Bensen family in 1926.

Penfield Reef Lighthouse (1874)

Penfield Reef Light, built in 1874, was one of the last masonry residence and tower lighthouses on a masonry foundation to be built in the United States, a design that was being replaced at the time by cast iron towers. The lighthouse is on the south side of Black Rock Harbor, at one end of a dangerous reef that extends to the southwest from Fairfield Beach into Long Island Sound. The reef, one of the most treacherous areas of the Sound, had earlier been marked by a can buoy, but increased commercial traffic in the area after the Civil War led to the construction of the lighthouse. The mansard-roofed design of Penfield Reef Light was also used fo several other lighthouses, like Sabin Point Light on the Providence River in Rhode Island. In 1969, the Coast Guard planned to replace the lighthouse with a steel tower, but a public outcry prevented this from happening. The Light was automated in 1971 and is still an active aid to navigation. In 2008, Beacon Preservation‘s bid to assume ownership of the lighthouse was approved under a program of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act.

Shailer-Banning House (1810)

Shailer-Banning House

Built around 1810, on Bridge Road in Haddam, the Shailer-Banning House originally had a gable roof, which was altered to the current hip roof around 1840. At that time, the house was also probably stuccoed. The house was built by David Shailer and later was home to his daughter, Ursula, and her husband, Benjamin Banning, who were married in 1835. Their daughter, Anna U. Minor, then lived in the house until 1874. Update: See comment below about the demolition of this house.

First Church Congregational, Fairfield (1892)

Fairfield‘s First Church Congregational has had six successive church buildings, the third having been destroyed when the British burned Fairfield in 1779 and the fifth burned down, apparently due to an arsonist, the night before Memorial Day in 1890. As described by Frank Samuel Child in An Old New England Church (1910):

The first Meeting-House was a small, rude building made of logs and rough hewn timbers, probably erected in 1640. Town meetings as well as church services were held in it. The second Meeting-House was built in 1765—a larger and more comfortable structure —a frame building forty feet square clapboarded, and a tower in the center of the roof. The third Meeting-House was reared in the year 1745—sixty feet in length, forty-four feet in breadth, twenty-six feet in height, with a spire one hundred and twenty feet. The Rev. Andrew Eliot called it an “elegant Meeting-House.” The fourth Meeting-House was modeled after the one destroyed in 1779. The congregation worshipped in it for the first time March 26th, 1786, but it was forty-two years before it was properly finished—a fact which suggests the slow recovery of the people from the losses of the American Revolution. A part of the funds came from the town and the confiscated property of traitors and a part from the subscriptions of the people. The Meeting-House erected in 1849 was the first one that came as the result of voluntary offerings. More than eight thousand dollars was raised for this Romanesque structure. The length of it was ninety-five feet and its breadth forty-seven. The spire extended to the height of one hundred and thirty feet. The seating capacity of this handsome Meeting-House was five hundred and fifty persons. The later changes adapted the structure to the needs of the day—a chapel being added during the pastorate of Dr. McLean and the church parlors when Dr. Bushnell was pastor.

The current church was completed in 1892 and has Tiffany windows.

Samuel Simpson House (1840)

Architect Henry Austin designed the home of Wallingford industrialist Samuel Simposon, which originally stood on North Main Street in Wallingford. In the mid-nineteenth century, Simpson, a silver manufacturer, partnered with Robert Wallace in the firm of R. Wallace & Company, the forerunner of Wallace Silversmiths. He was later president of Simpson, Hall & Miller. Simpson’s great-granddaughter, Margaret Tibbits Taber, later had a bookstore in the house. The home was later moved to its current location on Scard Road in Wallingford.