Adjacent to south of the Hotel Capitol, on Main Street in Hartford, is a commercial block, called the McKone Block, built in the same year, 1875 (as indicated along the top of the building). Between the two structures is a parking lot where an eighteenth-century house once stood, at one time owned by the Hammersley family, which burned down in the 1970s.
The commercial building at 105-115 Asylum Street, on the corner of Trumbull Street, was built around 1855 by Timothy Allyn, who owned the Allyn House hotel and served as mayor of Hartford. The building has been owned by his descendants ever since. In 1896, the building housed Willis & Wilson, a clothing store, whose owners commissioned the architect Isaac Allen, Jr. to design a new two story cast-iron front for the building. Manufactured by the George S. Lincoln Company, the intricately designed front, with broad display windows, has been a Hartford landmark ever since. From 1909 to 1989, the building was home to Willis and Wilson’s successors, Stackpole, Moore & Tryon, a clothing store which later moved down the street. The old building was recently renovated and now houses a bank.
Adjacent on the southwest to Memorial Bridge in Milford is a brick commercial building (33-35 New Haven Avenue) with a granite foundation constructed in 1928. The building’s tower compliments the bridge’s Memorial Tower across the street and has a similar roof. The building has been used as retail space and today is home to a branch of the Southport Brewing Company.
The Main Street Diner in Plainville is a late-1950s Master diner, which was originally in Hempstead, Long Island. It’s the third diner on the site on West Main Street.
The Georgian-Revival style Cowell-Guilfoile Building is on the corner of Grand and Leavenworth Streets in Waterbury. It was built in 1908 and the architect was Joseph T. Smith. The building is named for two law partners who were involved in its construction: Francis P. Guilfoile, a lawyer, legislator and mayor of Waterbury, and Judge George H. Cowell of the Waterbury district court.
Built around 1830 and thought to have served as offices and perhaps a warehouse for the Farmington Canal, the nineteenth-century commercial building at 12 West Main Street in Avon, adjacent to the Congregational Church, has since been a feed store, school, residence and, from 1947 to 1967, a post office. This former Farmington Canal Administration building continues today to house various businesses and living space.
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.
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