John Birge was a state senator and president of N. L. Birge and Sons, a knitting mill, which had been founded by his father, Nathan L. Birge. His grandfather was John Birge, who had played an important role in Bristol’s clockmaking industry. Birge‘s house, on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol, was built around 1880. After his death, the house was purchased by William J. Tracy, who would found Tracy-Driscoll & Co. in 1920. Note the house in the upper-left of the historic image linked to above.
Charles Arnold, a carpenter and builder and a captain in the Connecticut Militia, built his brick Federal-style house on Storrs Road in Mansfield soon after purchasing the land in 1824. He later exchanged houses with Joseph Sollace, also a carpenter and wagon maker. Today the brick is painted and the front entrance has a portico with columns, now glassed-in.
A very early date of 1637 has been claimed for the house of George Hubbard, an early Wethersfield settler, on Main Street, near Wethersfield Cove. It is more likely that the oldest part of the house was actually constructed in the late 1660s by the merchant and ship owner, John Blackleach. This would have been a simple one room below with a chamber above. Blackleach also had a textile and silver shop. The house was later expanded into a saltbox. One website claims this was also the home of Nathaniel Stillman III. A modern wing, with seventeenth century-style facade, has been added to the house in recent years.
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Located at the corner of Main and High Streets in Willimantic is a building which was constructed from 1909 to 1912 and then served as a United States Post Office from 1912 to December of 1966, when a new building opened just up Main Street. Left empty for almost thirty years, the old Post Office was renovated and is now a restaurant and microbrewery called the Willimantic Brewing Company.
Castle Largo is an unusual edifice, located at the intersection of Center and Main Streets in the Federal Hill area of Bristol. A miniature castle featuring elements of the Gothic Revival, Italianate and Second Empire styles, it was constructed in three stages in 1880 and is one of a number of interesting houses in Bristol designed by the local inventor Joel T. Case. After living in it for a few months, Case sold it to Charles Henry Wightman, a 24-year-old businessman.
Built between 1833 and 1849 on Mountain Spring Road in Farmington, the Greek Revival-style home of Henry Mygatt and his wife, Sarah Woodruff was later owned (from 1936 to 1954) by James Thrall Soby, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who commissioned the architect Henry-Russell Hitchcock to design a new rear wing to the house to serve as an art gallery. An owner in the late 1970s was Alexander Haig, Jr., when he was Director of United Technologies.
In 1802, Solomon Cowles presented a new brick house, on Main Street in Farmington, to his son, George Cowles, as a wedding gift. The George Cowles House was where the first meeting to plan the Farmington Canal was held in 1822. The house was purchased by Theodate Pope in 1907.
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