Lewis Rowell House (1851)

In 1851, local joiner Lewis Rowell built as his residence the brick house at 25 Lewis Street (a street renamed in his honor in 1883). The house has a 1926 addition by architects Smith & Bassette, projecting out to the sidewalk. Lewis built the adjoining house, at 27 Lewis Street, in 1855 as a mirror image to his own house. He purchased the house at 30 Lewis Street as a wedding present for his daughter, Mary Rowell Storrs, in 1874. She later lived in an 1899 house on Farmington Avenue.

S.C. Kingman House (1870)

As related in D. Hamilton Hurd’s History of Fairfield County, Connecticut (1881):

Samuel Clayton Kingman, the second son of Samuel Kingman, was born in South Redding, Mass. (now Wakefield), in 1830, graduated in the high school, and was the valedictorian of his class. The following year he spent at sea for the benefit of his health, after which he served his time as a machinist in the celebrated Lawrence Machine-Shop, with such apprentices as Amos Whitney, Joseph Marble, F. Higgins, and J. A. Taylor, after which he spent one year in the service of Col. Anderson, at the Tredegar Works at Richmond, Va. Upon his return he entered the employ of the Wheeler & Wilson Manufacturing Company, at Watertown, Conn., organized about that time [1852; the company moved to Bridgeport in 1856], and still remains in their employ. He has invented a number of machines for the Company which have resulted in a great saving of labor.

Mr. Kingman was married in 1853 to Miss Emily Eustis Brooks, at Haverhill, Mass., a descendant of Governor Eustis. He has ever been a benefactor to the poor and sorrowing, and his gifts, with those of his companions, have been many. The bell of the Park Street Church, to which they belonged, memorizes the death of a soldier, friend, and brother, Albion D. Brooks, killed at Cold Harbor, June 3, 1864. The clock and communion-table presented by them attest their interest in the welfare of their church.

Mr. Kingman resides at Washington Park, [in East Bridgeport,] in a delightful residence, surrounded by his family, which consists of his wife and live daughters. He has occupied many positions of public trust, and enjoys the confidence and esteem of the citizens of the city in which he resides.

As a prominent citizen of Bridgeport, Kingman was appointed a secretary of the meeting of Republicans in Washington Hall that heard a speech by Abraham Lincoln on March 10, 1860. Kingman’s house in East Bridgeport was built in 1870. Located at 373 Noble Avenue, it was designed by architect Abram Skaats.

Nathaniel Backus House (1750)

The Nathaniel Backus House, at 44 Rockwell Street in Norwich, was built as a Colonial era house in 1750, but is notable for its later Federal-style detailing. The house is named for Nathaniel Backus, Jr., who married Hannah Baldwin in 1726. Backus was one of only six men in Norwich who owned their own carriages in the years before the Revolutionary War. The house originally stood on lower Broadway. In 1951, it was saved from demolition and moved to Rockwell Street by the Faith Trumbull Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Together with the neighboring Perkins-Rockwell House, the Backus House is operated as a museum by the DAR.

Hanford Davenport House (1820)

In 1817, Hanford Davenport married Hannah, daughter of Col. Enoch St. John of New Canaan. Between 1819 and 1821, Davenport built a house in New Canaan on land owned by his father-in-law. The Federal-style house, perhaps built on the site of an earlier colonial-era house, is particularly notable for the high quality of its Adamesque interior carving, made by Deacon Hiram Crissey. The house, located at the corner of Oenoke Ridge and Lambert Road, was added to over the years up until the 1920s. It was later owned by Dr. N. W. Green and is sometimes called the Davenport-Green House.