Architectural Style

The Edmund Hurlburt House (1860)

Built around 1860, the Edmund Hurlburt House is a great example of Italianate architecture, featuring an elaborate portico, with paired arched windows above, and a cupola. Hurlbut and his partner, James Ashmead, were in the goldbeating business. The house is located on Congress Street, which Hurlburt and Ashmead helped develop and which is now a historic district with many Greek Revival and Italianate houses. Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney, the founders of Pratt and Whitney, also lived on Congress Street.

George A. Fairfield House (1866)

George A. Fairfield was a prominent leader in Hartford’s industrial growth after the Civil War. He was president of the Weed Sewing Machine Company and the Hartford Machine Screw Company. Fairfield Avenue was named for him and in 1866 he built an imposing Second Empire style mansion there. The house features many extravagant elements, including an medieval-style octagonal tower to the rear. The house is now subdivided into condominiums. The Oliver H. Easton House, another striking Second Empire home, is located across the street.

Temple Beth Israel, West Hartford (1936)

Congregation Beth Israel, Connecticut’s oldest Jewish congregation, was established in 1843. It is now one of the largest Reform congregations in the northeast. The first synagogue was built in Hartford in 1876 and is today the Charter Oak Cultural Center. In 1936, the congregation moved to a new building, on Farmington Avenue in West Hartford. Designed by Charles R. Greco, Temple Beth Israel was built in the Neo-Byzantine style and features a prominent Byzantine dome. The congregation received a West Hartford Historic Preservation Award in 2006 for the meticulous restoration of the synagogue.

J.C. Brown House (1833)

The J.C. Brown House was originally built, on Maple Street in Bristol, for the clockmaker Lawson Ives in 1833. Lawson and his uncle Chauncey Ives began the clock-making firm of C. and L.C. Ives in 1830. The company eventually failed in the wake of the 1837 Panic and ensuing depression. The house was sold in 1844 to J.C. Brown, another clockmaker, who often had the image of his house painted tablet of his ogee shelf clocks. After his bankruptcy in 1856, Brown’s clock company was bought by the E.N. Welch Manufacturing Company (later to become the Sessions Clock Company). The Greek Revival style Brown House has two entrances with columned porticos: the one facing Maple Street (west elevation) has Ionic columns and the one facing Woodland Street (south elevation) has Doric columns. The house has been converted for use as offices.

Dr. Roger Waldo House (1750)

At the intersection of Moulton Road and the Old Turnpike in Mansfield is a one-and-a-half story house with overhanging gable ends, probably built in the middle of the eighteenth century. Around 1770, it was purchased by Seth Pierce, Sr. and Jr., who sold it to Dr. Roger Waldo in 1798. Waldo, who died in 1816, was a prominent physician and representative at the Connecticut General Assembly. There is evidence of a blacksmith shop possibly having been on the property, which would have served the Mansfield Four Corners community.

The Clifford D. Cheney House (1904)

One of the mansions of the Cheney family of silk manufacturers, the Clifford D. Cheney House, on Forest Street in Manchester, faces Hartford Road across the “Great Lawn,” around which the mansions are situated. The house, like a number of the other Cheney mansions, was designed by Charles Adams Platt, an architect, artist and landscape designer, whose mother was Mary Elizabeth Cheney. The house is distinctive with its pink stuccoed exterior.

Windham Town Hall (1896)

The town of Windham held its first public meeting in 1691. As the area of Willimantic grew after the Civil War, various buildings in the borough were used for town meetings. Having utilized a room in the Savings Institute building, in 1880 the town offices were settled in the Hayden Block. Rising rents forced another move to a space above a silk mill. By 1893, when Willimantic became a city, the need for a city hall and county court building was clear, one that would serve all of Windham. There was much dissension in town over the cost and location of the new structure. After some prolonged political battles among various factions, construction began in 1895 and was completed in 1896. The impressive Victorian style building , with its elaborate clock tower, was designed by the noted architect, Warren Richard Briggs, (author of the 1899 book, Modern American School Buildings). A detailed history of the Town Hall‘s construction can be found in four parts (1, 2, 3, 4) at the Thread City website.