We continue the new year with a Queen Anne house at 404 Main Street in Watertown. It was built in 1894 for Robert and Anna J. White and features features shingled gables and quatrefoil cutwork balustrades. It now houses businesses.
Dwight E. Potter (1840-1911) was a carpenter and builder based in Willimantic. As head carpenter for the Willimantic Linen Company, he designed and constructed mill buildings, an office building and worker housing and was superintendent of all outside work. He also helped to build the Loomer Opera House on Main Street and ran a woodworking shop that produced interior and exterior architectural millwork for Willimantic’s Victorian-era houses. Potter was chief of Willimantic’s fire department from 1873 to 1880. In 1881, Potter and his first wife, Mary Ann Hazen, moved into a house he had designed and erected at 76 Windham Road. The house is now home to the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The house at 51 Holmes Avenue in Waterbury was built in 1890 for Alfred F. Taylor, who owned a painting and decorating company. He had previous lived for about a year in the house next door at 47 Holmes Avenue. The house at 51 Holmes Avenue is now used as a law office.
Now used as law offices by James Welcome, the house at 80 Central Avenue in Waterbury was built c. 1885-1890 for John Mullings, a tailor and real estate speculator. In 1907, it became the home of Frank Hodson, a saloon keeper, who donated the house in 1923 to the Waterbury Women’s Club. In 1941, it was sold and converted for use as office and apartment space.
This is my 100th post for Bridgeport! The William Leigh House at 450 Beachwood Avenue in Bridgeport (not to be confused with Waldemere Hall, the 1913 home of William and Frances Leigh at 409 Waldemere Avenue) was built in 1892. William Leigh was a piano dealer. He got a patent for a design he made to decorate a piano-front.
The Henry Bunce at 34 Hackley Street in Black Rock, Bridgeport, was built in 1893 for the Bartram family’s head gardener. Bunce also worked for Rev. Henry Collings Woodruff, minister of the Black Rock Congregational Church. The house was constructed in the same year as its more elaborate neighbor on an adjoining lot, the Arthur Smith House at 118 Ellsworth Street.
At 67 Union Street in Thomaston is an elaborate Queen Anne-style house built in 1884. It is named for David Plume, Treasurer of the Plume and Atwood Manufacturing Company, which produced lamps and supplied brass for Seth Thomas clocks. The house served as living space for various mangers of the brass mill. It was owned by the company until 1914, when it was sold to a company stockholder, Leslie E. Blackmer.
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