Chief Henry J. Eaton House (1908)

A 3-story blue colonial revival-style house.

The house at 36 Magnolia Street in Hartford was built in 1908 and shortly thereafter became the final home of Henry J. Eaton, Hartford’s former fire chief (from 1868 to 1903), who died in 1922. You can read more about Chief Eaton in my Substack article about him, his white horse, and an 1897 film they appeared in together. I also have a piece about the Chief’s mysterious disappearance in 1876. For at least a few years after his death, his daughter Henrietta Alice Eaton resided in the house with her mother, who died in 1926. During this time, H. Alice Eaton continued two businesses out of the house that had been started by her parents: she carried on her mother’s work as an expert dyer and cleaner of fine clothing and her father’s role as a fire extinguisher agent. You can read more about her and these businesses in my recent Substack article.

Thomas B. Chapman House (1895)

The Post-Chapman House, a two-story Colonial Revival-style residence that the Hartford Courant described in 1895 as painted yellow with white trim and is still painted those colors today.

The house at 706 Prospect Avenue in Hartford was built in 1895 for businessman Thomas B. Chapman (1859-1904), a grandson of Episcopal Bishop Thomas Church Brownell. As the Hartford Courant reported on July 24, 1895: “The house was built from plans prepared by W. F. Becker, Edward O’Neil was the contractor, Olds & Whipple did the plumbing and Walter F. Blake did the decorating. The house cost about $9,000.” Chapman initially rented the house to his father-in-law, William H. Post (1833-1899), a prominent Hartford merchant who sold carpets, curtains, and wallpaper. Post passed away in 1899 and Chapman was living in the house at the time of his own death in 1904. His widow, Helen Post Chapman (1860-1941), continued to reside in the house into the 1920s. Her memoir, My Hartford in the Nineteenth Century, was published in 1928. To learn more about the house and about a dramatic explosion in 1919 that destroyed its kitchen, read my Substack article: https://oldhartford.substack.com/p/when-an-explosion-destroyed-a-hartford?r=4j8x6h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Bartholomew Carini – Frank Lenti House (1909)

You can read much more about this house in my Substack piece “Frank Lenti and the Italians of Glastonbury.”

At 20 Lenti Terrace in Glastonbury is a substantial stone residence built into a hillside. The house‘s frame is said to have been put up by a dentist, who never completed the home because of the death of his wife. The house was completed in about 1909 by Bartholomew Carini, an immigrant from Northern Italy, who owned thousands of acres of land in town. He employed masonry construction, which is commonly found in vernacular Italian architecture. Another example of similar construction in Glastonbury is the ground level of the house on Main Street known as the “Glastonbury Villa.” Carini, a skilled hewer of oak and chestnut trees to make railroad ties, had arrived in about in Glastonbury in about 1890. He was soon able to purchase his own land and was soon joined by other Italian immigrants who began to grow fruit and establish orchards.

The house was later owned by Frank Lenti, another Italian immigrant, who first opened the famous Frank’s Restaurant in Hartford in 1933. After Lenti’s death in 1954, his wife eventually returned to Italy. For a number of years, the house was vacant and taxes on it went unpaid. The town was about to sell it in an auction in 1969, when Mrs. Lenti suddenly returned from Italy and arranged to sell it privately to pay the back taxes and the town’s cost in arranging the auction.

According to the Glastonbury’s Historic Resources Inventory page for the house, the date of 1909 is set in tesserae over its one chimney. The one-and-a-half house appears to have two-and-a-half stories when viewed from Chestnut Hill Road because it is built on a hill along a retaining wall with the basement exposed on the northeast side. The house’s front entrance is on that side, facing Lenti Terrace. The original floorplan has been altered, with a recessed side porch having been enclosed.

Capt. John Brown House (1776)

The house at 37 West Road in Canton was built in 1776 by Capt. John Brown III (1728-1776) to replace his earlier log cabin that stood west of the current house. As related in the 1860 book The Public Life of Capt. John Brown, by James Redpath:

John Brown, the third, at the outbreak of the revolutionary war, was chosen Captain of the West Simsbury (now Canton) trainband; and, in the spring of 1776, joined forces of the continental army at New York. His commission from Governor Trumbull is dated May 23, 1776. After a service of two months’ duration, he fell a victim to the prevailing epidemic of the camp, at the age of 48 years. He died in a barn, attended only by a faithful subordinate, a few miles north of New York City, where the continental army was at that time encamped. His body was buried on the Highlands, near the western bank of the East River.

Capt. Brown’s youngest son Abiel, who continued to live in the house until his death in 1856, wrote the book Genealogical History, with Short Sketches and Family Records, of the Early Settlers of West Simsbury, now Canton, Conn. (1856). Abiel’s brother Owen moved to Torrington and was the father of abolitionist John Brown. The younger John Brown later moved a monument to his grandfather, that once stood in the lot across the street from the house across from the house in Canton, to his farm in North Elba, New York. Brown was executed in 1859 and he was buried on his New York farm where his grave is marked by the same stone.

The house in Canton has a modern ell, shown on the right in the image above.

Former Noank Jail (1913)

In 1850 a small square building was erected to serve as a temporary lock-up near where the railway Depot is located today in village of Noank in Groton. In 1913 the building was sold and moved to its current lot at 87 Main Street in Noank. It was then used for various purposes over the years, including a barbershop, a speakeasy, and an insurance office, before becoming a private residence. Additions over time have included a rear kitchen, side garage, and a back porch.

Allen Avery – Welcome Fidler House (1879)

Allen Avery (1838-1915) was a businessman in Mystic who was very active in the local community. He worked as a ship joiner before entering the undertaking business, later opening a furniture store and then engaging in the real estate. He is associated with several houses in Mystic, including his 1874 house on Pearl Street on the Groton side and a later house on East Main Street on the Stonington side. In about 1879 he also erected the building (pictured above) at 6 Pearl Street. It’s described in the National Register of Historic Places Nomination form for the Mystic River Historic District as a “1 1/2-story cottage with roof of four gables, one in each direction,” as well as “Italianate solid brackets at the eaves returns of the front gable.” Also, “Window caps have small brackets.”

As related in the booklet The Mystic River Historical Society: Our First 40 Years (researched and written by Patricia M. Schaefer) the building was purchased in 1985 by Sandor Balint, first violinist
of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He and his wife Joyce, who was also a violinist, felt it was a good omen that the house had been owned in 1912 by a man named Welcome Fidler. According to Kelly Sullivan, Fidler was a carriage-maker from Woodville, Rhode Island, where he was the subject of frequent raids by the local authorities for running illegal saloons. He then relocated to the building on Pearl Street in Mystic, where he operated a lunch room and pool hall on the ground floor and lived upstairs. He had not left his old ways behind however, because in 1909 and again six years later, he was raided by the police, who seized quantities of whiskey.