A building that was first erected c. 1842 as a barn on the property of Thomas Greenman, youngest of the three brothers who founded the George Greenman & Co. Shipyard in Mystic, now houses the cooperage exhibit at Mystic Seaport. Coopers manufactured round wooden containers called barrels or casks, used both at sea and ashore.
The house at 35 Tolland Green in Tolland was built circa 1820 by Calvin Willey as a store. Willey was a lawyer who served as Judge of Probate, representative in the state General Assembly and United States Senator. In 1940, the former store was purchased as a summer home by New York Times columnist Zoe Beckley, who called it “Cubbyhouse.”
As downtown Danbury expanded in the late nineteenth century, commercial buildings were constructed on side streets. One is example is Library Place, formerly a cow path, which was opened after the construction of the Old Danbury Library in 1878. Here, Alexander Wildman built a post office, followed by other commercial buildings, including the Seifert Armory in 1891. Located at 5-15 Library Place, the large armory and commercial building, designed by architect Joel Foster, has storefronts on the ground floor, while the three upper floors contained apartments and the armory hall, itself later converted to apartments. In the 1920s, the Danbury Times began printing in the building and a plate-glass window was installed to show the press at work. The building has lost its original tower that projected above the main entrance. The farthest store on the left now has a Carrara glass (a type of pigmented structural glass) storefront.
The Putnam House Hotel was built at 12 Depot Place in Bethel in the early 1860s by the Judd family. The Putnam House Restaurant web site says it was built 1852. The land on which the hotel was built was owned by Seth Seelye, whose house on Greenwood Avenue would later become the Bethel Public Library. Ownership of the hotel changed hands several times over the years. By 1922, it was owned by Oscar Gustavson, who sold the building in 1955 to George Shaker, a local realtor, who turned it into apartments. The building was later converted again, this time to serve as the first of six restaurants that have occupied the space since 1982: Dickson’s, La Plume, Papa Gallo’s, Mackenzie’s Old Ale House, Monetti’s and currently, since 1998, as The Putnam House Restaurant and Tap Room.
The Mansard-roofed building at 70-74 Main Street in Winsted was built in the 1870s (certainly by 1880). At that time it had an adress of 64-66 Main Street and was known as the Baird & Woodruff Block for the two businesses it originally housed: Baird & Renouff, druggists at 66 Main Street, and F. Woodruff & Sons, flour and feed store at 64 Main Street. (more…)
The house at 54 Burnside Avenue in East Hartford was built c. 1870 by Andrew Roberts. A carriage maker, Roberts bought the tract of land in March, 1869 and soon took out a $3,000 mortgage, probably to build the house. The property was foreclosed in 1887 and three years later it was purchased by a farmer named George Bissell (died 1903). The house has been much altered through the construction of a modern store addition, currently home to Custodio Grocery, connected to the front facade.
The building at 31 Chaplin Street in Chaplin is an interesting composite structure, made up of what were once three separate buildings. They were brought together to form the current house in 1936. The earliest section was a mercantile store, erected between 1830 and 1832 by Edward Eaton. The next section was a tin shop, erected in the 1840s. It was operated by Alexander Dorrance, who most likely used the store building as his residence. The largest part of the current building was built as a school house, c. 1850. When these three buildings were joined, the school section was raised to be two stories, thus giving the completed structure a classic saltbox profile. The building is described under the heading “Rindge-Dorrance Tin Shop, c. 1840” on p. 15 of the pamphlet Historic Homes of Chaplin Village, by Johanne Philbrick. It is listed in the Chaplin Historic District as “Eaton’s Store” with a date of 1850.
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