Built around 1790, the Thomas Howe House, at the corner of Main and Church Streets in Stonington, remained in the Howe family until 1957. In 1887, when it was known as the “Aunt Mary Howe House,” it was rented for $100 a year by the Stonington Free Library Association. The house served as Stonington’s first library until 1899, when construction began on the current library building, located in in Wadawanuck Park.
Gungywamp is an archaeological site in Groton, known for its stone chambers and double circle of stones. The builders of these structures and their function has yet to be definitively established. Old Gungywamp is a colonial saltbox house. It was built around 1670 near the Thames River in Groton, not far from the Gungywamp complex. It is also known as the Wood-Allyn House. In the 1920s, it was acquired by Elmer D. Keith, an antiquarian who was later the director of the WPA Federal Writer’s Project Census of Old Buildings in Connecticut and author of Some Notes on Early Connecticut Architecture (1938). In 1945, he moved Old Gungywamp from Groton to its current location at 892 Clintonville Road in Wallingford.
The first residents of the Bryan-Downs House, originally located on the Post Road between Milford and New Haven, were Jehiel Bryan, Jr. wed Mary Treat, who were married in April, 1784. It was then the home of their daughter, Mary Esther, and her husband, Ebenezer Downs. Their son, Ebenezer Jr., inherited in 1837 and made a number of major changes to the house, replacing the original stone chimney with a smaller one and remodeling the interior. After Ebenezer’s death in 1873, the family rented out the house, which was later dismantled and stored for several years. In 1977, it was erected on the Milford Historical Society property, where today it forms part of the Wharf Lane complex of historic houses.
Located on the West Hartford side (across from the Hartford side) of Prospect Avenue, at #825, is the William Augustus Erving House. It is an elaborate Queen Anne residence, built in 1880 for William Augustus Erving, who was, at that time, secretary of the Hartford County Mutual Fire Insurance Company. His father, Daniel Dodge Erving, had previously served as president of the company and William Augustus Erving became president himself in 1917. According to A Century in Hartford, a history of the company, published in 1931,
Large and well proportioned, he maintained his fine physical vigor mainly by walking; he seldom missed his “morning constitutional” from his home on Prospect avenue to the office, a distance of three miles.
Erving’s brother, Henry Wood Erving, chairman of the board of the Connecticut River Banking Company, lived in a similar house next door.
The William Bush House, at 18 North Street in Milford, is a well-preserved example of the Greek Revival style. Built in 1836, it is a gable-to-street temple form house with a one-story Ionic colonnade across the front facade.
The mid-nineteenth century house at 736 Palisado Avenue in Windsor is a good example of the French Second Empire style, including a mansard roof. The exact date of construction (perhaps around 1865?) and the original owner of the house are unknown; the earliest known owner is John Kelley in 1885.
The Greek Revival house at 55 Hayward Avenue in Colchester was built in the 1840s (perhaps 1842, the same year as the adjacent house at 63 Hayward Ave). Both houses were later owned by he Hayward family. The earliest listed owner of the house was B. Brown in 1854. The house has a twentieth-century rear addition.
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