At 140 Ellsworth Street in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport is a house built in 1836 for Captain John Brittin, who owned a shipyard). The house was remodeled around 1890, when its original full Greek Revival pediment was removed. The house’s original kitchen wing was later removed and is now a separate residence at 33 Hackley Street.
Lemuel Camp built his house on Main Street in Durham in 1806 and it was soon opened as a tavern. Lemuel Camp died in 1843 and his widow, Martha Pickett Camp, in 1860. The house was then divided between their surviving children, Edward Pickett Camp of New Haven and his unmarried sister, Sophronia Camp, but neither lived in the house. Sallie B. Strong bought the property near the turn of the century and rented rooms to tenants. Edward P. Camp’s daughter, Hattie Camp, married the watercolor painter Wedworth Wadsworth (1846-1927) and they rented rented the house as a summer residence. The house has passed through other owners over the years and was restored in 1978.
William H. Cadwell (1863-1941) was New Britain’s leading architect in the nineteenth century. In 1890-1891, he designed and built his own house, at 130 West Main Street in New Britain, as a gift for his new bridge, Frances Hadley (1871-1958). The ornate Cadwell House is a Chateauesque residence constructed of yellow brick, limestone and Portland brownstone with terra cotta ornamentation and slate roofs. The house is now home to the law firm of Camp, Williams, and Richardson.
At 103 Village Street in Rockville, Vernon is a house built in 1882 for Chauncey Winchell Jr. (1825-1914). He was the son of Chauncey Winchell, one of the founders of Rockville’s Springville Mill.
The house at 78 Pearl Street in Middletown was built between 1888 and 1892 (or c.1886) for James G. (or W.) Hubbard, a blacksmith. In 1911, the house was purchased by Charles Meader (d.1926).
The Greek Revival house at 13 West Mystic Avenue in Mystic was built in 1840 by the Chapman family. From 1956 to 1961, it was the home of Captain (later Admiral) James F. Calvert, who commanded the USS Skate, the third US nuclear submarine to be commissioned and the second submarine to reach the North Pole. Skate first went under the polar ice cap on August 11, 1958, but the thickness of the ice prevented it from surfacing. Skate later became the first submarine to surface at the North Pole on 17 March 1959.
In 1746, Sylvanus Freeman purchased a farm in the Wormwood Hill area of Mansfield and in 1752 he built a gambrel-roofed house on the property. Freeman sold the farm in 1764 and it passed through several other owners until 1817, when it was acquired by Selah Holley, a widow from Charlestown, Rhode Island, whose husband had passed away two years before. She lived in the homestead with her children, among whom was Perry Holley, who continued to reside in the house with his mother after his marriage in 1830 to Lois Fenton. As described in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Tolland and Windham Counties, Connecticut (1903), Perry Holley
was born July 2, 1809, in Rhode Island, and came to Mansfield when a boy. During his boyhood he worked upon the farm, and when still a young man learned the trade of forger, working at the manufacture of bits and augers in various localities where those goods were made; he was also one of the first operators of the trip hammer, being very expert in the handling of the clumsy machine, and consequently commanded good wages. In company with Hiram Parker he operated a forge shop near his house for a few years. After working at his trade for many years, he spent his declining years in Mansfield, farming, and died there in March, 1885. In religion he was a member of the Methodist Church at Gurleyville, and when a young man took a very active part in its affairs. Mr. Holly married Lois Fenton, a native of Mansfield, daughter of Elisha and Phileta (Storrs) Fenton, where her father was a blacksmith. Mrs. Holly died on April I8, 1892, aged eighty-four years, four months, to a day.
The Holley Homestead was sold out of the family in 1889 to Mary F. Sewall of Montclair, New Jersey, who used it as a summer home. One autumn, as she prepared to return to New Jersey for the winter, she asked a local carpenter to build an addition to the house. When she returned next summer, she was astonished to find that he had built what was essentially an entirely new house attached to the old gambrel-roofed colonial. The original house was later altered with the addition of a porch and gables. After 14 years of ownership, Sewell sold the house to Elizabeth Scheib Doty of Brooklyn, whose husband, Ethan Allen Doty (d. 1915), owned a large paper mill called Doty & Scrimgeour. The house, located at 627 Wormwood Hill Road, was next sold in 1931 to Stanley Kunitz, a well-known poet who worked on restoring the structure. It was again sold in 1935 to John Plimpton, who rented out rooms in the house. It is still owned by his heirs.
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