Richard Coan House (1841)

Richard Coan House

Richard Davis Coan built the house at 15 Fair Street in Guilford around 1841. He married Flora Hitchcock Granniss. Richard Coan is described in New England Families, Genealogical and Memorial, Vol. III (1913):

He spent the greater part of his life in the place of his birth, and being a builder by occupation erected many houses and public buildings there. Later he removed to New Haven, where he was actively engaged in the building business, a member of the lumber and manufacturing firm of Lewis & Beecher Company, who conducted large planing mills, and was one of the leading industries of the city. He was known by the title of major, commanding the Guilford troops on muster day. He was very prominent in the work of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and later in the Church of the Ascension, and being a musician of note was active in the choirs of both churches. After his removal to New Haven. Mr. Coan built a fine residence on Wooster street, which was at that time the finest residential section of the city.

The house in Guilford was later owned by Beverly Monroe, who ran a store on Boston Street established with his father and brother.

Storrs Hall House (1834)

Storrs Hall House

At 104 East Avenue in Norwalk is a brick house built c. 1834 by Henry Selleck. By 1847 it was the residence of Storrs Hall A.M., who ran the English & Classical School in the house. He is described in Norwalk (1896), by Rev. Charles M. Selleck:

Dr. Hall graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont, and afterwards engaged in academic work in Connecticut. He was the brother of the learned Edwin Hall, D. D., the pastor for twenty-three years of the First Congregational Church in Norwalk, in which town Dr. Storrs Hall established a private of school of high grade, and remained for a number of years its able and successful head. He subsequently studied medicine at Yale University, New Haven, and leaving the east established himself as a physician in Rosendale, Wis. In 1860 he was elected a Trustee of Ripon College, Wisconsin, and four years later chosen Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the same institution. His life has been spent along scholastic lines, and he is now, at the age of four and eighty, industriously engaged in professional work.

Cordial Storrs House (1757)

Cordial Storrs House

At 1332 Storrs Road, on the campus of the University of Connecticut, is a colonial house that has served as student housing and is now UCONN’s Veterans House. The house was built c. 1757 and was the home of Cordial Storrs. This is most likely the Cordial Storrs (1692-1782) described in The Storrs Family (1886), by Charles Storrs:

Cordial Storrs of Mansfield, Conn., third son and ninth child of Samuel Storrs of Sutton-cum-Lound, Nottinghamshire, England, Barnstable, Mass., and Mansfield, Conn., was born in Barnstable, Mass., Oct. 14, 1692, and came with his father to Mansfield, Conn., in or about 1698. He married Hannah, daughter of Thomas Wood of Rowley, Mass. [They had four children]

Mrs. Hannah Wood Storrs died March 18, 1764. There is a tradition that she joined the Separatists and was disciplined by the church, but there is nothing in regard to this on the church records. The Separatist movement followed the great revivals which prevailed in Windham County in 1740-41. Itinerant preachers went about producing violent excitement among the people, decrying the old religious worship, and organizing new churches.

Cordial Storrs married, Oct. 10, 1765, Mrs. Catharine Bicknell, widow of (Capt.) Zachr. Bicknell of Ashford, Conn. He was sixty-seven [actually closer to 73] years of age at the time of this second marriage, and he seems to have contracted it with great care as to financial matters.

The farm and home of Cordial Storrs were in the North Parish. At the first church meeting of the Congregational church in that Parish, he was chosen deacon “by a very unanimous vote;” an office which he held until his death at the advanced age of ninety years, Oct. 1782.

His son Cordial [born 1728] died, unmarried, in 1755, at the age of twenty-seven, and with him the male line of this branch of the family became extinct. [Their son Jabez died in 1826]

Another Cordial Storrs lived from c. 1758 to 1790 and married Lettice Cummings.

Benjamin P. Downs House (1835)

Benjamin P. Downs House

Local tradition holds that the house at 657 South Britain Road in Southbury was built c. 1770, but it is more likely that it was built c. 1835 by Benjamin P. Downs on the site of his family’s old homestead. In 1854 he sold the house to Sally Curtiss, widow of George Curtiss, so it is also known as Mrs. S. Curtiss House. It was extensively restored by Henry Bassett, who acquired the house in 1946.

Miah Perry House/Nehemiah Jennings Block (1787)

668-670 Harbor Road, Southport

At 668-670 Harbor Road in Southport is a 1787 building that was significantly altered in later years. It may give the impression of being a nineteenth-century mansard-roofed commercial block, but the upper floors began as the homestead of Miah Perry. It was possibly altered and expanded in 1834. By that time the building displayed the influence of the Dutch Colonial style with two low-pitched gambrel roofs intersecting at the street corner. In the 1870s, the house was raised by Nehemiah Jennings to sit above a commercial section. In one part of the new ground floor Jennings ran a market and post office, while the other part contained the John Wood dry goods store. Miss Mary Allis (1899-1987) purchased the building in 1947 and refurbished it the following year. She had started renting space for her antiques store on the southeast corner in 1945. Mary Allis was a major figure in the world of folk-art collecting.

This the 3,000th post at Historic Buildings of Connecticut! That’s 3,000 great buildings throughout the state!