Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Renaissance Revival

Curtis Building, Bristol (1904)

The Curtis Building is a blonde brick commercial building at 255 Main Street in Bristol. It has apartments on the upper floors and shops on the first floor that still have their original fronts with cast iron columns.

First Baptist Church of Waterbury (1917)

The First Baptist Church of Waterbury was organized in 1803. At first, meetings were held in members’ homes or outdoors. The first meeting house was built in 1818 at the Mill Mill Plain crossroads, two-and-a-half miles from the center of town. It had no paint, plaster or chimney and the seats were wooden benches without backs. The second house of worship was erected (after considerable financial difficulties) c. 1840 in the town center on South Main Street. It was later significantly remodeled and extended, the entrance being moved to the Bank Street side of the building (the church spire was later taken down after it was deemed unsafe). This church was later replaced by a new one, built on Grand Street and dedicated in 1883. It was destroyed by fire in 1912. The corner stone of the church’s fourth building, at 208 Grove Street (located in a primarily residential area), was laid on October 3, 1915 and the completed church was dedicated in 1917. The Baptists later moved from the building, which is now New Life of Waterbury Church.

Weisman Building (1902)

The Weisman Building (originally the Meigs Building), located at 105-109 Bank Street in Waterbury, was built in 1902. It is one of the many structures built in the wake of the downtown Waterbury Fire of 1902. This now vacant commercial building has been for sale/lease for many years.

Corning Building (1929)

The Corning Building is at the southwest corner of Main and Asylum Streets in Hartford. Today’s Corning Building was built in 1928–30 and replaced an earlier Corning Building on the site, which dated to the 1870s. Before that, the three-story Robinson and Corning Building stood here. Dating to the 1820s, it was long home to the Brown & Gross bookstore, which later moved to Asylum Street. Arriving by train to deliver a speech in Hartford on March 5, 1860, future president Abraham Lincoln walked up Asylum Street to the bookstore, where he first met Gideon Welles, the editor of the Hartford Evening Press. Welles would later serve as Lincoln’s secretary of the navy. Dr. Horace Wells had his office here, where in 1844 he had a tooth successfully removed without pain after first inhaling laughing gas–the first use of anesthesia. A plaque was placed on the Corning Building in 1894 to honor Wells on the fiftieth anniversary of his discovery.

Old Middletown Post Office (1916)

At 291 Main Street in Middletown is a former U.S. Post Office, a limestone Renaissance Revival structure built in 1916. Planning for a new post office had commenced in 1911, but there was controversy over where to built it. Its location, at the southwest corner of Court and Main Streets, had been owned by the Federal Government since 1841. The Post Office ceased operations in 1977 and is now used by Liberty Bank.

2050-2052 Park Street (1917)

The two-story apartment building at 2050-2052 Park Street in Hartford is constructed of contrasting tawny brick and has a corner storefront. It was designed by Burton A. Sellow and was built in 1917.

First National Bank of Wallingford (1882)

The Renaissance Revival building at 35 South Main Street in Wallingford, built in 1882, was originally the home of the First National Bank (founded in 1881), which moved to a new building in 1921. The building’s original first floor arcade has been partially filled in.