
Israel Allen House (1785)



The Commodore Charles Green House, designed by the important architect A.J. Davis is an excellent example of the Gothic Revival style. Built in 1851 on Main Street in South Windsor, it was the home of Commodore Green, a naval officer who captured a Confederate blockade runner during the Civil War. (more…)

In 1701, the people of Hartford living east of the Connecticut river were granted the right to their own minister. In 1783, when East Hartford became a separate town, the church became the First Congregational Church in East Hartford. The first meeting house was begun in 1699 and took several years to complete. It was later replaced by the second meeting house in 1740, which was torn down in 1835 when the current structure was built on Main Street. The completed church was dedicated in January 1836. The interior was extensively altered after a fire in 1876.

Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut’s last colonial governor and first state governor (1769-1784), was born in Lebanon in 1710. Educated at Harvard, Trumbull began working with his father, Joseph Trumbull, as a merchant in 1731. He became a delegate to Connecticut’s General Assembly in the 1730s and his later support of the Patriot cause led to his election as deputy governor in 1766, with the support of the Sons of Liberty. He became governor in 1769, after the death of governor William Pitkin. Trumbull was the only colonial governor to support the American Revolution, organizing Connecticut’s resources to serve the war effort and earning the praise of George Washington. Among the children of Jonathan Trumbull, Sr., who died in 1785, were Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. (a later governor of Connecticut) and the artist, John Trumbull.
The Governor Jonathan Trumbull House was built by his father, Joseph, between 1735 and 1740, and was inherited by Jonathan Trumbull in 1755, who enlarged and remodeled it in the fashionable Georgian style. The building is architecturally notable as the state’s only central chimney house with a center hall. It was also moved slightly north of its first location in 1824. The house has been owned and operated as a house museum since 1935 by the Connecticut Daughters of the American Revolution.

The Adeline Chadwick House, on Sherman Street in Hartford, was constructed in 1877 by the builders John R. Hills, a mason, and William Blevins, a stone dealer. The Second Empire-style house and its adjacent twin to the north, the Nathan Bosworth House (1878), were among the first to be built in Hartford’s West End.

The Federal-style house built for the sea captain Hezekiah Perkins is located on Broadway in Norwich. It is across from Little Plain Green, a triangular-shaped park which was donated to the town by Perkins and his neighbor, Deacon Jabez Huntington. Perkins was cashier at the Norwich Bank and, with his nephews, was also involved in the founding of the Chelsea Grammar School in 1806, which operated for about forty years.

Abraham Bishop was a New Haven property owner and Jeffersonian political radical who owned the block on Elm Street where the John Cook and Timothy Bishop houses were built in the early nineteenth century. Somewhere between 1828 and 1838, he had a house built for his daughter, Caroline Nicoll, on Elm Street, next to the Cook house and across from the Bishop House.
Today’s post concludes New Haven Month, but also marks an important anniversary: Historic Buildings of Connecticut began one year ago today with the Joseph Webb House in Wethersfield! A post has since appeared for each day, a feat I had not entirely planned on when I began this project! That makes 365 buildings preceding today’s (taking into account an extra one for a leap year, but subtracting the humorous April 1 post). Recently, the blog has moved to a new domain and won an award from the Hartford Preservation Alliance! Let’s see what interesting buildings appear here in the site’s second year!