Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Houses

Charles Pomeroy Ives House (1875)

The house at 18 Totoket Road in Branford was built c. 1860-1875 for Charles Pomeroy Ives (1847-1933). An 1872 graduate of Yale Law School, Ives was a lawyer and farmer (also described as a “farmer-philosopher”) who was the first in Connecticut to market milk bottles. He had a 200-acre dairy farm in Branford called Fellsmere Farm. In 1933, at the age of 87, Ives went missing from his farm. His body was found three days later a mile-and-a-half from his home. He had died from exhaustion and exposure. Starting in 1983 the house was substantially altered: the windows, siding and other exterior features were replaced and the interior was gutted.

George E. Prentice House (1930)

Known as “The Ledges,” the Colonial Revival house at 845 Worthington Ridge in Berlin was built circa 1930 for George E. Prentice. An immigrant from England, Prentice trained in the New Britain hardware industry. In 1912 he founded the Prentice Manufacturing Company, which produced metal fasteners.

Bozrah Congregational Church Parsonage (1872)

Next to the Bozrah Congregational Church is the parish’s parsonage. The church was built in 1843 and the parsonage, located at 23 Bozrah Street, was built in 1872.

Rev. Joseph Ayer House (1825)

Reverend Joseph Ayer (1793-1875) was pastor of the Congregational Church in North Stonington from 1825 to 1837. Sometime during that period his house, located at 94 Main Street, was built. He then moved to Sprague where he became minister of the Hanover Congregational Church. North Stonington village was once known as Milltown and as related in his obituary in The Congregational Quarterly, Vol. XIX, No. 2 (April, 1877):

At the time he commenced his residence in Milltown, a village within the bounds of his parish, there were in that small village ten places in which intoxicating liquors were sold in larger or smaller quantities, — eight stores, and two taverns. Within a short time he was permitted to see them all closed, or cleansed of the fumes of alcohol, — an achievement hardly to be paralleled in the annals of the temperance reform.

Oliver Avery House (1818)

The house at 92 Main Street in North Stonington was built in 1818. It is known as the Oliver Avery House. This may be the Oliver Avery who was born in Groton in 1757 and died in North Stonington in 1842.

Daniel Tyler House (1810)

The city property listing for the house at 130 Washington Street in Norwich gives a construction date of 1810, which seems too early for this Italianate building. The National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Chelsea Parade Historic District gives a date of c. 1880, which is too late because it is known that Edith Kermit Carow, future wife of Theodore Roosevelt, was born here on August 6, 1861. The house has clearly been much altered over the years. Could Italianate features have been added to a much earlier house? It was the residence of Daniel Putnam Tyler (1799-1882), Edith‘s grandfather (Tyler’s daughter Gertrude had married Charles Carow of New York City). Daniel Tyler was a West Point graduate who became an iron manufacturer and railroad president. He served as a general in the Civil War, commanding a division in the Union Army at the First Battle of Bull Run. Although he took a substantial portion of the blame for the Union disaster at that battle, he was promoted and commanded a brigade at the Siege of Corinth, Mississippi. At the Battle of Harpers Ferry, September 15, 1862, Tyler’s division surrendered to Stonewall Jackson and spent two months as prisoners of war at Camp Douglas before being officially paroled. Tyler left the army in 1864, the same year his wife passed away. He owned his house in Norwich until 1868. By the start of the twenty-first century the building had become dilapidated and was condemned, but c. 2004 it was restored and subdivided into apartments.

Burwell Tavern – Thomas House (1785)

Little is known about the origins of the house at 4 Southbury Road in Roxbury, which originally served as a tavern and stage-coah stop. It is said to have been built in 1785 by a man named Burwell. He may be identified with one of several men named Brothwell (a variant spelling of the same surname) who lived in Roxbury at the time [refer to Roxbury Place-Name Stories (2010) by Jeannine Green, p. 17 for more details]. In 1839 the building was purchased by the Thomas family who owned it for over a century. The most well known member of the family was Harvey Thomas (died 1894). He raised and sold horses. A nineteenth-century barn that survives on the property almost certainly served as his horse barn.