The David Hills House in Wethersfield was built in 1822 and is transitional between the Federal and Greek Revival styles. The house, located on Main Street, was built as a gift for the 1822 wedding of Amelia Talcott and Maj. David Hills. Interestingly, Hills’ second wife was also named Amelia Talcott.
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The Bull Homestead, in Woodbury, was built by Deacon Samuel Bull, a blacksmith who came to the town from Farmington. He adopted Thomas Bull, the son of his brother.
The Italianate style house of James Niles, on Charter Oak Place in Hartford, was built in 1869. It was later owned by the Ketridge and Hillard families. If you want to learn more about Italianate and Gothic Revival houses, please read my latest article!
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In 1900, a small library opened in the Southington Town Hall, but money was soon raised to construct a library building on Main Street. Completed in 1902, this original library building is a neoclassical structure built of of glazed terra cotta brick and granite. In 1917, Emma Bradley Yeomans Newell, a wealthy philanthropist, donated money for the addition of a “historical wing” to the library. The wing, not actually built until 1930, was named the Sylvia Bradley Memorial, in honor of the wife of Amon Bradley and grandmother of the notable Southington citizen, Bradley Barnes. The Southington Historical Society, founded in the 1960s, housed its collections and met in the wing. A new library was constructed in 1974 and the old building then became a museum called the Southington Historical Center. It recently received a grant from the Community Foundation of Greater New Britain to complete renovations on the building.
The house at 200 Beacon Street in Hartford was built around 1875, when the earliest homes in that section of the West End of Hartford were being constructed. Two developers, Burdett Loomis and Joseph Woodruff, opened Beacon Street, between Farmington Ave and Warrenton Ave, in 1872 and the Gothic Revival-style home at no. 200 was built soon after. Bad economic conditions soon followed, so that additional houses were not built in the area until the 1890s and after. Another house, built around the same time, is the Kenyon House on nearby Kenyon Street.
Samuel Huntington, born in Scotland, CT, had a notable career during the Revolutionary War and after. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, he also served as the last President of the Continental Congress (1779-1781) and the first “President of the United States of America in Congress Assembled” under the Articles of Confederation in 1781. He was later the Chief Judge of the Connecticut Superior Court (1784-1785) and Governor of Connecticut (1786-1796). Buried in the Old Norwichtown Cemetery, located behind his Norwich home, Huntington was re-interred in the Samuel Huntington Tomb in 2003. There has been an effort in Norwich to create a Huntington Presidential Library. Huntington’s house, on East Town Street, was built in 1783-1785 and has been extensively modified over the years, with later Greek Revival style additions.
In 1715, settlers in what is now the Town of Columbia successfully petitioned to become a second ecclesiastical society of the Town of Lebanon. Columbia became a town in 1804 and the current Columbia Congregational Church building was erected in 1832.
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