The Walker House, at 250 Ellsworth Street, in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport, dates to around 1855. It is said to have been built by Oliver Walker, a partner in the Walker-Rew Shipyard, but is named for Eliphalet Walker, also a shipyard owner. The house, which is Black Rock’s most striking Italianate-style home, was extensively renovated seven years ago, when the rear third of the house was removed and completely rebuilt.
Built in 1902, the house on the southwest corner of Park Avenue and Atlantic Street in Bridgeport was the home of John G. Howland, president of the Howland Dry Goods Company, a major Bridgeport department store. Since 1949, the English Tudor-style house has been owned by the University of Bridgeport and is called Howland Hall.
Prentice Pendleton, originally from Middlebury Vermont, built a house in 1819-1820 on Main Street in Essex. He had married Almira Pratt of Essex, but sold the house after her death in 1826. It was later owned by Captain Cornelius Doane. Part owner of the ship Cotton Planter, Capt. Doane was a pioneer in the Mobile packet and cotton trade. In the 1850s, he turned his attention from the declining shipping industry to the commercial development of Essex, where he became president of the Saybrook Bank in Essex. Starting in the later nineteenth century, Main Street in Essex began to develop as a retail area and the Doane House was owned by several local businessmen. In the twentieth century, a small store was attached to the house on the east.
John Warner of Chester built his house at 12 Maple Street in 1799 on land he had acquired from his brother-in-law, Grinold Clark.
Captain W. H. Williams, said to have been related to a signer of the Declaration of Independence, built a house in Clinton around 1710. Located at 110 East Main Street, the house was used as an antiques store at the time it was photographed for a WPA survey in the late 1930s. It now houses a bridal beauty salon, part of what is known as Clinton’s “Wedding Row.”
In his 1860 History of Harwinton, R. Manning Chipman writes that “Mercantile business, for the greater part of the last fifty or sixty years, has in Harwinton been transacted at from three to five stores under the care of four or more owners.” One of these owners was Truman Kellogg, who worked with various business partners over the years. Kellogg’s Greek Revival-style house in Harwinton was built around 1838 and has two main entrances, one facing Litchfield Road and the other North Road. In 1853, a sermon was published by Rev. Warren G. Jones, the Harwinton Congregational Church‘s seventh pastor, under the title: An Assured Hope: a Funeral Sermon, Preached on the Occasion of the Death of Truman Kellogg, who Departed this Life December 31st, 1852, aged 64 years. At Harwinton, Conn.
The substantial Victorian house at 83 Washington Street in Norwich was built about 1870. Today, the house is the Herman Belli Liberty House for men, run by the Southeaster Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependance.
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