Built around 1740, the Timothy Hale, Jr. House is located on Main Street in Glastonbury. It was built by Timothy, Jr. on part of a parcel of land bought by his father. Hale was in the Connecticut militia during the Revolutionary War, serving as a Captain in 6th Regiment.
The building which now serves as Wesleyan’s President’s House was originally built in 1856 for Gabriel Coite, who became a state senator in 1860 and moved to Hartford in 1862, when he became the State Treasurer. In 1863, his Italianate house on High Street in Middletown was sold to Mrs. Jane Miles Hubbard, the widow of Samuel Hubbard, who had been a US Postmaster General. Wesleyan University acquired the Coite-Hubbard House from her heirs in 1904 to become the new President’s House, replacing the first building used for that purpose.
Built in 1867, the South Center District School #2, on Main Street in Woodbury, was used for classes until 1900. In 1977, the building was acquired by the neighboring King Solomon’s Lodge and presented to the Old Woodbury Historical Society. By 1984, the building was restored and is now a museum, where every year second graders from the Regional School District #14 can experience classes conducted in a nineteenth-century one-room schoolhouse.
The building known as the Revolutionary War Office, in Lebanon, was originally built around 1727 for Joseph Trumbull, and has been moved several times over the years to different sites on the town green. At the start of the Revolutionary War, it was located closer to Jonathan Trumbull’s house and was serving as a store and office for his merchant business. Trumbull was Governor of Connecticut during the war and he used the office to plan the state’s defense with the Council of Safety from 1775-1784. Notable figures who conferred with Trumbull in the office include George Washington, Henry Knox and Israel Putnam, as well as Rochambeau and Lafayette. In 1891, the building was acquired by the Connecticut Sons of the American Revolution and restored. A bronze tablet was placed in 1896. Today it is open to the public as a museum.
One of the Manchester mansions of the Cheney family of Silk Manufacturers, the Horace B. Cheney House was built in the mid-1890s. It has a Forest Street address and is also adjacent to the “Great Lawn,” where many of the mansion are located. Horace B. Cheney was the son of Frank Woodbridge Cheney and Mary Bushnell Cheney, the daughter of Horace Bushnell. His brothers were Ward, Howell, Austin and Frank D. Cheney.
Bullet Hill School is located on Main Street in Southbury. Built in 1789, it is one of New England’s oldest surviving brick schoolhouses. Earlier known as the brick school, it is thought to have acquired its name from a hill in Southbury where bullets were cast during the Revolutionary War (or, in an alternate version of the story, a hill where bullets were discharged during militia practice, which were then remolded for reuse at the school. Used as a school until 1942, the building was saved in the 1960s and and restored in the 1970s by the Friends of Bullet Hill School, which became the Southbury Historical Society in 1974. It is now maintained by the town and the Historical Society and for over twenty years has hosted a living history program for the region’s third graders.
The Greek Revival-style home of Edward Savage, on Main Street in Cromwell, was built in 1837. Savage had inherited half of his father’s farm and then bought the other half from his brother. He was also involved with manufacturing, founding the Savage Revolving Firearms Co. in 1858. The house was later significantly altered, with the addition of the cupola, porches and a new wing on the north side. Some of these changes were probably in response to the popularity of the Italianate style on Cromwell’s Main Street in the 1850s and 1860s.
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