Haley Manors (1898)

In 1981-1982, three nineteenth-century buildings on Capen Street in Hartford, each with 6-units, were converted into cooperatively-owned housing and named “Haley Manors” after Alex Haley, the author of Roots. The property for the project was donated by Rev. Dr. Lincoln J. Davis Sr., founder and President of Lincoln Enterprises, one of the first minority-owned business development corporations in Hartford. Two of the buildings, at 42-44 Capen Street (see image above) and 46-48 Capen Street (see image below), are wood-frame structures that follow the same basic plan with different decorative details on each building. They were built in 1898 by Henry D. Ely. The third building, located at 36-38 Capen Street (see image below), is a brick Italianate, built around 1875. These buildings are mentioned in Tour 8 in my new book, A Guide to Historic Hartford, Connecticut. (more…)

Barnum-Thompson and Staples Buildings (1892)

On State Street in Bridgeport are two connected Queen Anne-style buildings constructed in 1892. The Barnum-Thompson Building, at 177-181 State Street, and the Staples Building, at 189 State Street, were designed by George Longstaff. This was the last structure contracted by P.T. Barnum before his death in 1891. A section of the building facing Court Street (now Markle Court) was razed for a parking lot by People’s Savings Bank in 1941. A recent tenant, for a decade at 177 State Street, was Playhouse on the Green.

Old North Cemetery Office, Hartford (1890)

Established in 1807, Hartford‘s Old North Cemetery (pdf) contains the graves of such notables as Frederick Law Olmsted (Sr. and Jr.), Daniel Wadsworth, Horace Bushnell, Dr. Mason Cogswell (father of Alice Cogswell) and Mary Beecher Perkins (sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe and grandmother of Charlotte Perkins Gilman). It is also the final resting place of African-American soldiers of the 29th Colored Volunteer Regiment from the Civil War. The long-neglected cemetery is in a bad state of repair, but is now undergoing renovation. The cemetery has a Queen Anne-style brick office building, which resembles a tiny Victorian house. (more…)

William H. and Lucretia Stow Cummings House (1890)

The William Cummings House is a Queen Anne-style mansion, built c. 1890 at 28 Elm Street in the Plantsville section of Southington. In 1876, industrialist William H. Cummings married Lucretia Amelia Stow Cummings. She was born in Southington in 1851 and graduated from Vassar in 1874, where she had studied astronomy. Lucretia Stow Cummings served as head of Connecticut’s Public Health Nursing Association, working to reduce infant mortality rates, and led a campaign to improve rural schools in the state. Their grandson is Abbott Lowell Cummings, a noted architectural historian.