The Thames Club (1904)

The Thames Club, Connecticut’s oldest social club and the third oldest in New England, was founded in 1869 and later acquired its first permanent home in a residence built in 1838 at the corner of State and Washington Streets in New London. After the house burned down in 1904, it was replaced by a new clubhouse at the same location, completed the following year. Unlike the house that preceded it at 290 State Street, the new Thames Club building‘s entrance was designed to face uphill to the north, instead of facing State Street. The building was designed by Ewing and Chappell of New York. Architect George Chappell was the son of A.H. Chappell, a member of the Thames Club.

235-257 Asylum Street, Hartford (1872)

The series of buildings at 235-257 Asylum Street in Hartford are valuable nineteenth century survivors, examples of a period when cast iron was popular as a decorative element on commercial buildings in the city. New York has its famous Cast Iron District in SoHo, but Hartford has a few examples of cast iron ornamentation from the same period, most notably the cast iron front added to the building at 105 Asylum Street in 1896. The three buildings at nos. 235-257 Asylum Street were built between 1870 and 1872 by John Harrison. As reported in the Courant on June 13, 1871:

John Harrison and his associates, who purchased a portion of the Shepherd property on Asylum street, will erect at the head of Ann street a five-story iron building, which will be the second iron front in that street when the improvements now going on are completed.

To the left, in the image above, is 235-237 Asylum, completed in 1871. The original cast iron front on the first two floors was later replaced, but has been retained on the upper three floors. The adjacent middle building, 241 Asylum, is a narrower structure, having three instead of four bays. The largest of the buildings, 247-257 Asylum on the right, dating to 1872, was constructed of brick. Its windows have cast iron architraves and the building is topped by a bold cornice featuring semicircular arches, a feature also used on the later McKone Block on Main Street, built in 1875. There are more pictures after the jump…

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Palace Theater (1922)

Opened in January of 1922, the Poli’s Palace theater was built by Vaudeville impresario Sylvester Z. Poli of New Haven. The Rennaissance Revival building is the work of Thomas W. Lamb, a noted architect of theaters, who later designed the Warner Theatre in Torrington. After Poli’s retirement in 1934, it became the flagship theater of the Loew’s Poli chain and was used as a cinema and performance space until 1987. The Palace Theater has since been restored and reopened in 2004 as a performing arts center for Greater Waterbury.

Hartford B.P.O. Elks Lodge (1903)

The yellow brick building of the Hartford B.P.O. Elks Lodge #19, organized in 1884, was built on Prospect Street in 1903. Designed by John J. Dwyer, a Hartford architect, the building was constructed in the Renaissance Revival style. The Hartford Club, nearby on the same street, was built the same year in the Georgian Revival style. The Elks Lodge has retained its original elegant interiors.

Dime Savings Bank, Waterbury (1927)

The bank building at 60 North Main Street in Waterbury was built for the Dime Savings Bank in 1927. The Dime Savings Bank was incorporated in 1870 and had previously been based in Victorian-era house. The bank’s new building was designed to reflect the architecture of the Spanish Renaissance by the New York the firm of York and Sawyer and features sculpted relief panels of allegorical figures and symbols of the Zodiac. The building, expanded in 1951, is currently available as commercial & office space.

Charles H. Farnam House (1884)

The house of Yale Professor Benjamin Silliman, a chemist and geologist, was built in 1807 and once stood at 28 Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven. In 1871, part of the house was moved to 87 Trumbull Street and other parts were distributed to other locations around the city. In 1884, Charles Henry Farnam, a lawyer, had his house, designed by J. Cleaveland Cady, built on the same site on Hillhouse Avenue. An addition to the house, designed by architect Leoni Robinson, was constructed in 1898. Since 1920, the house has been owned by Yale University and is currently used by the Department of Economics.

Sage-Allen Building (1898)

Like the Shoor Building, which I featured yesterday, the Sage-Allen building on Main Street in Hartford was designed by Isaac A. Allen, Jr. The yellow brick Renaissance Revival department store building was built in 1898 and originally housed both Sage-Allen & Co. and the Chas R. Hart Co., a carpet, drapery and wall paper retailer. The two companies each had display windows, on the first and second floors respectively. Sage-Allen soon grew and came to occupy the adjacent buildings on Main Street to the south. The company went bankrupt in the 1990s and the building was in danger of demolition. New apartment and retail space was to be constructed on the site and a design solution was found that incorporated the old facade with new additions on either side. The resulting new structure, called the Lofts at Main and Temple, has allowed the Sage-Allen facade to still dominate the view east up Pratt Street, as it has for over a century.

Also, check out the latest posts on my Historic Places blog about sites I recently visited in Pennsylvania and New York: Washington’s Headquarters in Newburgh NY and Knox’s Headquarters in New Windsor NY; the Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches and Cemeteries of St Clair, PA; Trout Hall in Allentown PA and the Troxell-Steckel House in Egypt PA; and historic buildings of Jim Thorp and Bethlehem PA, including Bethlehem’s Colonial Industrial Quarter.