The house built for Hiram G. Marvin, on Lyme Street in Old Lyme, is an 1824 Federal style structure with some Greek Revival influences. In 2007, the house became the first in Old Lyme to have an historical plaque from the Historic District Commission. Hiram G. Marvin had two brothers, one named Aaron Burr Marvin and the other named Alexander Hamilton Marvin (probably both born in the 1790s). I wonder if they got along later in life?
Captain George Phillips was a leading merchant of Middletown and, like his neighbor, Jehosaphat Starr, he answered the Lexington Alarm in 1775. His brick gambrel-roofed house, on Washington Street, was built around 1750. The Greek Revival entryway and the reduction in size of the first floor windows are nineteenth century changes. There is also an obviously later addition to the house’s east elevation.
The First National Bank of Litchfield began in 1814 as a branch of the Phoenix Bank of Hartford. Benjamin Tallmadge was one of its founding directors. Its impressive Federal style building on North Street was built in 1816. The bank was reorganized as the First National Bank of Litchfield in 1864 and remains the oldest continuosly operating business in Litchfield and the oldest nationally chartered bank in Connecticut.
The Roberts Homestead is an 1822 brick house, located across from the Town Green in Bloomfield. It was built by Lemuel Roberts. Later in the nineteenth century, owner Lester A. Roberts, who gave land to add to the Town Green, was described as “a man of unusually wide intelligence and some literary note,” who “is now a resident of Brooklyn, but still makes Bloomfield his summer home.”
In the late nineteenth century, Litchfield became a showplace for the Colonial Revival movement. Old houses were restored and new ones constructed in the Colonial Revival style. One such home is the Charles Deming House on North Street, built in 1900. The architect was E. K. Rossiter and the house was built for Charles Deming, a grandson of Julius Deming, whose house is also on North Street.
For Thanksgiving, we focus on the First Congregational Church in Bloomfield. Originally established as the parish of Wintonbury, the first meetinghouse was erected in 1737 and the first official gathering was in 1738. A second meetinghouse was built in 1801 and served for 56 years before being moved aside for the current church building, built in 1858. Wintonbury had by then became the Town of Bloomfield in 1835. The church’s steeple blew down in 1862 and was replaced with a sturdier one that includes a clock.
The oldest parts of the house of Captain John Latimer, on Main Street near Wethersfield Cove, date to around 1690. The house is right next door to the Captain Samuel Latimer House. The John Latimer House is currently for sale.
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