The Deacon Chauncey Wells House, at 491 Wells Road in Wethersfield, was built in 1770. According to a traditional story, the east half of the house was built first, then the second half later on. These were initially two separate residences, possibly built for two brothers. The house was sold out of this branch of the Wells family in 1882.
Henry Laurens Kellogg of Newington gained wealth running a satinet factory, which made uniform fabric during the Civil War. Admiring the architecture he saw while visiting Italy, Kellogg returned home and built his house in 1875 in the style of an Italian villa. The factory, which later burned down, stood between his house and Piper Brook. Once hidden by a row of poplar trees in front, the Kellogg House has a commanding presence on Willard Avenue where Stoddard Avenue ends. The house is now subdivided into condominium units.
Union Baptist Church is one of the oldest black congregations in Hartford. In 1889, there was a split in church’s membership and, although both groups wished to retain the name of Union Baptist Church, one group had already claimed a charter before the other group arrived, so the latter group established itself as Shiloh Baptist Church. The English Gothic building which is today Union Baptist Church, at 1921 Main Street in the city’s North End, was built in 1871 and was originally the Memorial Church of St. Thomas, an Episcopal church built in honor of Bishop Thomas Church Brownell, the founder of Trinity College. By the 1920s, St. Thomas Church was facing diminishing attendance. St. Monica’s, a black Episcopal congregation, which had been meeting in a dilapidated church formerly used by Shiloh Baptist Church, was allowed to use the Parish Hall of St. Thomas Church. Eventually, in 1925, the church was offered to Union Baptist Church and St. Monica’s congregation moved to a smaller church, on Mather Street, which Union Baptist had erected in 1908 and was now vacating.
Leaders and members of Union Baptist Church made important contributions to the early civil rights movement: the Reverend John C. Jackson, who who became pastor in 1922, worked to open employment opportunities for African Americans and in 1943 helped establish the Connecticut Inter-Racial Commission, now the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. C. Edythe Taylor, a member of the church, was the first African American teacher in the Hartford public school system. The Union Baptist Church is on the Connecticut Freedom Trail. (more…)
The Elisha Stillman House, at 99 Wells Road in Wethersfield, was built around 1775. The property had been owned by Lt. John Stillman, who sold it to his brother, Elisha Stillman, in 1773. Their father, Deacon John Stillman, was married to Mary Wolcott, whose father Samuel Wolcott had owned the land on which the Joseph Webb (1752) and Silas Deane (c. 1770) Houses were later built on Main Street. In 1765, either John or Elisha Stillman sold Deane the land where he later built his home. The Stillman House later became part of the Silas W. Robbins farm property in the nineteenth century.
The Slater Memorial Museum was begun in 1886 and dedicated in 1888 on the campus of the Norwich Free Academy. It is one of only two fine arts museums in the United States on the campus of a secondary school. The Museum was donated by William Albert Slater in memory of his father, the wealthy industrialist and philanthropist John Fox Slater. The building was designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style by architect Stephen C. Earle of Worcester and was expanded in 1906 with the addition of the Converse Gallery, donated by Charles A. Converse. The Museum‘s collections include regional American paintings, plaster casts of classical and Renaissance sculpture, and Asian, Pre-Columbian, Native American, African and Oceanic art. The use of plaster cast copies were a way American museums over a century ago would bring great European works to the American public. In 1891, at a time when the Metropolitan Museum was developing its own collection of plaster casts, a cast committee traveled from New York to Norwich to observe the arrangement of the Slater Memorial Museum’s collection and meet with William Albert Slater. The Slater Memorial Museum continues to be an educational resource for the Academy and the area community.
Now owned by the Town of Guilford, the Jedediah Lathrop House was built in 1822 on Park Street. Maj. Jedediah Lathrop had torn down a preexisting house on the same site to build his impressive Federal-style home. Lathrop, who married Mary Caldwell in 1793, was a prominent citizen, master of St. Alban’s Masonic Lodge and part of the reception committee for General Lafayette, who visited Guilford in 1824. Lathrop also cultivated grapes, like those displayed at the 1838 fair of the Horticultural Society of New Haven. The house was later owned by Bernard C. Steiner, author of the History of Guilford and Madison, Connecticut (1897). A barn on the property was attached to the house and a new wing added around 1960.
The first Five Mile Point Light was constructed of wood in 1805 on the East side of New Haven Harbor. It was called Five Mile Point due to its distance from downtown New Haven. Considered to not be high or bright enough, the original tower was eventually replaced, in 1847, by the current one, built of brownstone with a brick lining. A newer lighthouse, built on nearby Southwest Ledge in 1877, superseded Five Mile Point Light, which thereafter ceased operation, although a caretaker continued to look after the structure. The land around where the lighthouse stands was later owned by the War Department and then the State of Connecticut, before eventually being acquired by the City of New Haven in 1924. This land soon became Lighthouse Point Park. The tower was renovated in 1986, with the exterior being steam cleaned and repainted. Adjacent to Five Mile Point Light is an 1835 keeper’s house, which at one time was connected to the tower by an enclosed wooden walkway (no longer extant). [Note that in the picture above the lighthouse is strung with lights as part of the park‘s holiday season Fantasy of Lights.]
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