Located at the corner of Worthington Ride and Sunset Lane in Berlin is a Tudor Revival/Shingle style house built c. 1905-1907 by Charles M. Jarvis, head of the Berlin Iron Bridge Company and a founder of the Berlin Construction Company. The property once included a bowling alley.
The sign on the house at 14 Prospect Hill Road in Cromwell identifies it as the Hezekiah Ranney House with the date of 1797. In that year, Hezekiah Ranney (1742-1826), a school teacher, sold the house to Samuel Kirby, a farmer, and moved out of the state. Ranney had inherited the property in 1775 with a house built in the 1740s for his father, Capt. Joseph Ranney. Hezekiah Ranney possibly built the current house around 1788, when he mortgaged the property, and it was in existence by 1816, after the property was acquired by Benjamin Wilcox. The house is also known as the Kirby-Wilcox House. Benjamin Wilcox had a farm and operated a cider mill with his brother Eliphalet, who acquired his brother’s holdings in 1830. When Eliphalet Wilcox died in 1839, his son, Eben Wilcox, inherited the property. Eben gave the house to his son, Joseph E. Wilcox, in 1854. Joseph Wilcox, probably made the Italianate Victorian-era alterations to the house, c. 1870. His brownstone carriage step still stands in front of the house. The house was sold out of the Wilcox family in 1915.
Two brothers, Gideon Hale Jr., and Ebenezer Hale, built the house at 1381 Main Street in Glastonbury in 1796. The house was known as “Gideon’s Temptation” because Gideon Hale, Jr. is said to have built it in a unsuccessful attempt to get a local woman to marry him. Although it was built in the late seventeenth century, the house’s current appearance reflects alterations in the Colonial Revival style made later. The house was acquired by J.H. Hale in 1911 and moved from its original location near Hale’s house at 1420 Main Street. The Gideon Hale, Jr. House is now Gilmore Manor, an assisted living facility.
The Timothy Bradley House, 12 Bradley Street in Branford, was built c.1730. Its original owner was Rachel Swaine, daughter of Daniel Swaine and wife of Joseph Browne, who she married in 1726. The house was sold to Timothy Bradley in 1778 and it remained in the Bradley family almost a century.
Happy New Year from Historic Buildings of Connecticut! One of Connecticut’s grandest houses is the Lockwood–Mathews Mansion in Norwalk. A 62-room Second Empire-style country house, it was built by LeGrand Lockwood, a New York City businessman and financier, who named the estate Elm Park. Construction of the mansion, designed by Detlef Lienau, begun in 1864 and took four years. Lockwood lavishly furnished his house and displayed art by Hudson River School painters, including the monumental Domes of the Yosemite by Albert Bierstadt. The depreciation of gold in 1869 was a series financial blow for Lockwood, who died in 1872. His heirs lost the estate through foreclosure in 1874. Charles D. Mathews bought the property in 1876 and it remained a residence of the Mathews family until the death of his daughter, Florence Mathews, in 1938. Sold to the City of Norwalk in 1941, the estate became a public park. After the city announced plans to demolish the mansion in 1959, preservationists formed a Common Interest Group and after a prolonged legal struggle were able to save it. The Junior League of Stamford-Norwalk arranged to lease the building from the city and formed the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum of Norwalk, Inc. to restore and operate the mansion as a public museum. The mansion is now undergoing a new renovation, begun in 2007.
The house at 72 Willow Street in Southport was built in 1796 by Paul King Sheffield (1764-1845). Born in Stonington, Sheffield engaged in privateering during the Revolutionary War with his father and brother in an armed vessel they equipped and sailed themselves. After the war he moved to Fairfield and married Mabel Thorp, daughter of Capt. Walter Thorp, and became a ship-master and ship-owner. The house on Willow Street was the childhood home of Paul King Sheffield’s son, Joseph Earl Sheffield (1793-1882), who grew up to become a wealthy railroad magnate and philanthropist. Later a resident of New Haven, Sheffield gave Yale University a building and a $130,000 endowment for its scientific department, which was renamed the Sheffield Scientific School in his honor.
According to the 1985 pamphlet Federal Hill: A series of walking tours of the Federal Hill neighborhood and of other areas of interest in Bristol, Connecticut, written and designed by C. Houihan, the 1842 house at 492 Jerome Avenue in Bristol was once the home of Bronson Alcott, the transcendentalist and father of author Louisa May Alcott. But Alcott’s stints as a teacher in Bristol occurred earlier than 1842. He taught for four months in the Fall Mountain District of Bristol in the winter of 1823-1824 and was at the district school on West Street for four months in 1824-1825. His last period as a teacher in Bristol came when he was again at the school on West Street for a few months, in the autumn and winter of 1827-1828. Does anyone know more about this house and its connection to Bronson Alcott?
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