Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Houses

Wheeler-Beecher House (1807)

Noted architect David Hoadley designed the house at 562 Amity Road in Bethany for Darius Beecher (1768-1833). Built in 1807, the house is considered a major example of the Federal style in New England, both in its exterior and interior detailing. It had a number of owners in the nineteenth century, including Abraham Beecher, who sold it to John Thomas, who then gave it to his son Lewis Thomas as a wedding present. Next it was owned by Orrin Wheeler, whose family retained it until 1899. The house was owned for a time in the twentieth century by Huntington Lee and his sister Josephine B. Lee, who added a wing on the south side where the Gale Electric Company made lamps and reproduced antiques. For a brief period in the early 1940s the wing was occupied by William Edwin Rudge, who published a graphic arts magazine called Print. The cover of Volume II, Nos. 3 & 4 (December 1941) featured an illustration of the house by Hugo Steiner-Prag. There also exists an etching of the house by John Taylor Arms entitled “Old Hoadley House, Home of “Print,” Bethany, Connecticut.”

699 Tolland Stage Road, Tolland (1892)

The house at 699 Tolland Stage Road in Tolland was built c. 1792. According to Around and About the Tolland Green (2002) by Christine Gray, a resident of the house was a Dr. Brace, an apothecary whose medicine bottles are on display at the Old Tolland County Jail and Museum.

16 Tolland Green (1776)

For the Fourth of July, here is a saltbox house at 16 Tolland Green in Tolland that was built in 1776. One known resident of the house was a man named Winters. According to Around and About the Tolland Green (2002) by Christine Gray, he was a proprietor of the County House, the hotel attached to the Tolland County Jail, whose wife refused to live at the jail.

Frederick Bulkeley House (1825)

The Greek Revival house at 118 Broad Street, across from Broad Street Green in Wethersfield, was built by Frederick Bulkeley in 1825. The Greek Revival house has later nineteenth-century stylistic alterations. Frederick’s son Stephen Bulkeley later built an Italianate house next door.

Benjamin Bulkeley House (1792)

Benjamin Bulkeley was the cousin of Capt. Charles Bulkeley, who built the impressive gambrel-roofed house at 56 Broad Street Green in Wethersfield. Benjamin built his own house at 106 Broad Street c. 1792. The house has later nineteenth-century alterations.

Joseph Burr House (1791)

At 477 Simsbury Road in Bloomfield is a house built in 1791 by Joseph Burr. Flax grown in Wintonbury (Bloomfield) was used to make linseed oil and Burr had a linseed oil mill on Loeffler Road, which was then called called Burr Road. (more…)

Captain Samuel Stiles House (1790)

In 1790, Captain Samuel Stiles (1757-1813), a veteran of the Revolutionary War, erected the house at 169 Melrose Road in East Windsor. As catalogued in The Stiles Family in America: Genealogies of the Connecticut Family (1895), by Henry Reed Stiles:

Capt. Samuel Stiles left the sum of $1,000 to the Scantic Parish (East Windsor) as a fund for the support of the Gospel ministry in that parish. He was also a prominent Free Mason. The following are the inscriptions on his gravestone, and that of his wife, in the Ireland St. graveyard in E. W.:

“Capt | Samuel Stiles | died of a consumption | 9th of January A.D. 1813 | His name will ever be gracious to all who knew him, especially to the congregation with whom he habitually assembled for divine worship. As a tribute of gratitude and as a testimony of respect to his beloved memory this stone is raised by surviving friends to mark the place where his body rests in the silence of the grave.”

“Mrs. Jennet, wife of Capt. Samuel Stiles, died Feb; 20, 1824, ae 62, as a testimony of respect to her beloved memory this stone is raised to mark the spot where her body rests, till it shall arise at the call of him who conquered death.”

In the Hartford City and County atlas of 1869 the house is listed as the home of J. M. Stiles. Quoting again from The Stiles Family, John Morton Stiles was

born at East Windsor, Conn., Jan. 11, 1818; married Dec. 14, 1843, Julia Ann (daughter of Eli and Rocksalena Allen) Gowdy (born Feb. 5, 1819), of East Windsor. He was a farmer at Melrose, Conn., where he died, April 12, 1886.

The was later the Melrose post office for about four decades.