St. John’s Episcopal Church Rectory, North Haven (1855)

St. John's Church Rectory

At 1 Trumbull Place in North Haven is the rectory (priest’s residence) of St. John’s Episcopal Church. The rectory was built in 1855 and the third floor and mansard roof were added in the 1880s. As related in North Haven Annals (1892), by Sheldon B. Thorpe:

On the removal of Mr. [Rev. Alonzo G.] Shears to New Haven, the Rev. Seth Davis came from Woodbury, Conn., and officiated part of the time. During his term the present rectory was built—-1855-—and he was its first occupant. He remained two years and was succeeded by the Rev. Joseph Scott. This clergyman was the first, in the long list of clergymen, to be “called” as rector. He gave his whole time to the people and became greatly beloved by them. His salary was $500 and the use of the rectory.

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Arthur G. Evans House (1917)

Arthur G. Evans House

The house at 30 Warren Way in Watertown was built in 1917 for Arthur G. Evans, purchasing agent for Chase Brass and Copper Company of Waterbury. According to the nomination for the Watertown Center Historic District, the house’s design, which represents a phase of the Colonial Revival style that sought to accurately duplicate the form, massing and detail of Colonial houses, has been attributed to Cass Gilbert. The plans may also have been drawn by another member of his firm or been outlined by Gilbert and completed by an apprentice. (The nomination‘s listing of structures in the Historic District gives a date of 1917 for the house, while the text for the District’s Architectural Significance gives a date of 1929).

William Vars House (1892)

House at Saybrook Point

The Italianate house at 21 Bridge Street on Saybrook Point in Old Saybrook was built in 1892 as a home for the prominent engineer William Vars. In the twentieth century it was the home of Mary Clark. By the late 1990s the house had become dilapidated, but it has recently been refurbished to become an eight-room guesthouse. Called “Three Stories,” it is owned by of Saybrook Point Inn & Spa, whose main building is located just across the street. The guesthouse, which remains true to the architecture and interior design of the period, opened in May, 2014.

Grace L. Raymond House (1925)

Grace L. Raymond House

Horace H. Raymond (1897-1954) married Grace Lillian Lattin in 1924. Soon thereafter (about 1825) she built a Bungalow style house at 198 Hundson Street in Berlin. Horace Raymond worked as an engineer for The Stanley Works and additions made to the rear of the house contained his own shop. In the early 1930s he took on a personal project: developing a pneumatic operator for an automatic door triggered by an optic device. He patented his invention in 1934. The first commercial installation of his “magic eye doors” was at Wilcox Pier Restaurant, at Savin Rock in West Haven. Another set of his automatic doors can still be found at the main entrance of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the late 1930s he established his own company, Raymond Engineering, which was based in Middletown.

Elijah Sherman House (1748)

Elijah Sherman House

The house at 14 Main Street South in Woodbury may have been built as early as 1748, but was possibly built c. 1796 by Elijah Sherman on land he had acquired in 1791.

Elijah Sherman (1754-1844) was born in Stratford, (or perhaps New Milford?). As related in a biography of his son, Rev. Charles Sherman, who became a Methodist minister [Vol. VII of Annals of the American Methodist Pulpit (1861), by William B. Sprague]:

Elijah Sherman, removed in early life from New Milford, his native place, to Woodbury, where he lived till January, 1844, when he died in his ninetieth year. He was a man of vigorous mind and excellent character, and was several times a member of the State Legislature. He commenced the Christian life at the age of forty, and was ever after an active and devoted member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

He had earlier been a member of the Episcopal Church but, as described in The Town and People (1900), edited by Julia Minor Strong:

At what exact date is not positively known, but previous to 1812, Elijah Sherman, Sr., known as “Father Sherman,” became dissatisfied with the Episcopal Church, joined the Methodist denomination, and became very active and zealous in advancing its interests. In 1812 he was appointed the first regular “Class Leader,” the several ministers who had officiated here, having previously fulfilled that office. His home was the house now owned by the Methodist Society, and used as its parsonage. The exact date of its erection is lost, but the ancient grain bins and “smoke house” in the garret, attest to its great age, and it is probable that it was built previous to 1800. After his appointment as “Class Leader,” if not before, his “long kitchen” became the place for all the meetings of the Methodists, and was so used until the erection of the first Church, in 1824, on the site of the present edifice. Even after the church was built, the class and social meetings were still held at Mr. Sherman’s home, until the building of the present church, in 1840.

Elijah Sherman is further described in William Cothren’s History of Ancient Woodbury (1854):

The temperament of Mr. Sherman was humble, earnest, and eminently conscientious; firm in his adhesion to what he deemed to be the line of duty. He could not adopt Calvihistic opinions, then ardently pressed upon the public mind, in all the Congregational pulpits. Swayed by an enthusiastic spiritualism, his sympathies were with those humble heralds of the cross, so efficiently blessed in the morn of Methodism. For twenty years, with some few companions, himself an elder, the worshipers in this faith, assembled in his own house. His religious experiences gave him new developments in Christian duty. Chastened by the death of several children, his faith and zeal and knowledge grew deeper, more ardent and expanded. He became an eminent example of Christian excellence. Under that humble roof, from subdued and pure hearts, prayers gushed forth, not surpassed in pathos and piety by a Massillon or a Bourdaloue. Souls now looking to the great judgment seat with confidence and holy hope, recall with devout gratitude his ardent aspirations in that lowly temple. Had he received the advantages of early education and training, with the compass and melody of his voice, he would probably have made an eloquent and powerful preacher. He lived to see the erection of a Methodist church on his own homestead, and a numerous and devout company of believers worshiping there. He was gathered to his fathers at the advanced age of ninety, in the month of January, 1844.

The Methodist Church sold the house in 1937 and it has since been a private residence.