Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Architectural Style

Grace Episcopal Church, Windsor (1864)

Constructed while he was still designing monuments for the firm of J. G. Batterson, George Keller‘s Grace Episcopal Church, on Broad Street Green in Windsor, is his earliest completed building. Just 21 years old at the time, Keller had just arrived in Hartford in 1864. The cornerstone was for the church was laid that year and the building was completed in 1865. Windsor’s Episcopal parish had been established in 1842, and their first church building was built in 1845. The church designed by Keller, in the Gothic Revival style, was enlarged and rededicated in 1934.

Park Terrace Houses (1895)

This week, we will be looking at the architecture of George Keller. Born in Ireland, Keller came to the United States when he was ten. Taking up the study of architecture, he came to Hartford to design monuments for J.G. Batterson, producing many memorials for Cedar Hill Cemetery. He would later design the cemetery’s Northam Memorial Chapel in 1882. Keller utilized a Gothic style and resisted the Classical and Colonial Revivals.

Primarily associated with churches and public buildings, Keller also designed houses, so we begin this week with the row houses he designed along Park Terrace in Hartford (above). These houses present a simplified form of Keller’s “Modern Gothic” style. They also display similarities with Keller’s design for the (no longer extant) Hartford High School building of 1883. He also designed a similar group of houses along Columbia Street in 1888-1889. The Park Terrace houses had a special significance for Keller, because the last house on the row (24 Park Terrace, below) became his own home as the fee for planning the project.

St. John’s Episcopal Church, East Hartford (1867)

St. John’s Episcopal Church, at Rector and Main Streets in East Hartford, was built between 1867 and 1869. The High Victorian Gothic-style church was designed by Edward Tuckerman Potter, and displays that architect‘s interest in polychromatism, which he would use again in his Church of the Good Shepherd and Parish House in Hartford and Trinity Church in Wethersfield, as well as in the domestic architecture of the Mark Twain House in Hartford. Rev. John J. McCook, the volunteer rector of St. John’s Parish at the time, was instrumental in bringing about the building of the church.

The Huntington House (1901)

The Huntington House, located along Windsor’s Broad Street Green, was built in 1901 and was lived in by members of the Huntington family until 1998. It is a Neo-Classical Revival and Colonial Revival style house, modeled on a Newport mansion. In 2001, the house was restored and opened to the public as the Huntington House Museum, but closed in 2005 due to a lack of community support. It now serves as offices.

The Benjamin Moore House (1770)

This house is unrelated to the paints. The Benjamin Moore House was originally built around 1770 in Poquonock, a northern area of Windsor. It was constructed by Simeon and Hannah Barber Moore but, after they moved to Torrington in the 1780s, it was passed on to their son Benjamin and his siblings, Eldad and Hannah. In 1801 they applied for a mortgage which was held by Oliver Ellsworth. But even with an additional loan, the Moores had sold off their property by 1806. In 1986, the house was saved from demolition by Edward Sunderland, of Sunderland Period Homes, who dismantled it and moved it five miles away to its present location, where it is now part of Ellsworth Settlement in Windsor, a modern development consisting of relocated period homes. The house’s current Connecticut River Valley doorway is an appropriate reproduction. The house was featured in an article in the February, 2008 issue of the magazine, Early American Life. The house is currently for sale.

The Joseph Rainey House (1830)

The date the Joseph Rainey House, on Palisado Avenue in Windsor, was built is unknown, but the Greek Revival style was popular in the 1820s and 1830s. It is also possible that the Greek Revival section was added to an earlier building owned by Jonathan Ellsworth. Joseph Rainey was the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing South Carolina from 1870 to 1879. He bought the house as a summer home in 1874. The house is on the Connecticut Freedom trail.

The James Colt House (1856)

Built on Wethersfield Avenue in Hartford for the brother of Sam Colt, the Italianate-style James Colt House was built in 1856. Like the other Italianate houses along the same block, including Sam Colt’s own Armsmear, with which it shares many design features, the James Colt House has been attributed to the architect Octavius J. Jordan. In 1976, the house was the first in Hartford to be restored with a grant from the National Park Service and Federal tax incentives.