Thirman Milner, born in 1934, was elected to the State House of Representatives in 1978 and served as Hartford’s first black mayor (and the first popularly elected black mayor in New England) from 1981-1987. During that period, Milner lived in a 1927 brick Colonial Revival-style house (designed by Berenson & Moses) at 19 Colebrook Street.
The Greek Revival farmhouse at 319 Barbour Street in Hartford was built around 1875 by John Clark, with a front porch added around 1900. The rear ell was added in 1915, when the Women’s Aid Society opened a shelter for “friendless and erring women.” John C. Clark, Jr. opened a funeral home in the house in the 1950s, now called Clark, Bell & Bell. John C. Clark, Jr. was the first African-American to serve on the Hartford City Council (1955-1963). On the Council, he helped create the fair rent commission.
Now surrounded by houses of a much later date, the Greek Revival farmhouse at 249-251 Blue Hills Avenue in Hartford was built around 1850. There were once many dairy farms in the area, and this house’s owner, Charles Tuttle, operated one well into the twentieth century.
At 121 Holcomb Street, in the Blue Hills section of Hartford, is a striking example of the Stick Style. A Victorian Stick cottage built around 1875, it displays the style‘s distinctive trademarks of decorative half-timbering (called stickwork) and ornamental woodwork.
This week we’ll focus on buildings in the North End of Hartford. The Samuel F. Cadwell House, at 20 Belden Street in the Clay/Arsenal neighborhood, is one of the most impressive brick Victorian Gothic houses in Hartford; so impressive, in fact, that it is sometimes called the “Mark Twain House of the North End.” It was built in 1879 for Samuel Foote Cadwell, a dealer in seeds and agricultural supplies. The house was only sold out of the Cadwell family in 1967. Later abandoned, the Cadwell House and other nineteenth-century houses on Belden Street were recently rehabilitated.
As described in The Bench and Bar of Litchfield County, Connecticut (1909):
Romeo Lowery, born in Farmington in 1793. graduated at Yale in 1818, studied at the Litchfield Law School and was admitted to this Bar in 1820. He settled in Southington and was a highly respected member of the Hartford County Bar and a Judge of the County Court. He died in 1856.
Lowery also invested in two local companies that would later became part of Southington’s two most successful firms, Plant Bros. Manufacturing Company and Peck, Stow & Wilcox. Lowery’s 1828 house is at 101 North Main Street in Southington. It remained in his family until 1964 and is today used as offices.
The Francis W. Lewis House is a three-story (with porches on the first two floors) Italianate house at 153 N Main Street in Southington. It has been dated to around 1880, but was apparently converted from a preexisting building dating to 1800. Timlow’s Ecclesiastical and Other Sketches of Southington, Conn. (1875) lists a Francis W. Lewis:
son of Chauncey (184), b. Jan. 21, 1816; m. Dec. 7, 1840, Sarah C. Beckley, daughter of Moses W. and Mary Berkley. He lives in the village of Southington, and has a boot and shoe store.
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