Phineas Camp House (1758)

According to a date carved on an interior wooden beam, the three-bay Phineas Camp House, on Main Street in Durham, was built in 1758. The property, including the house, a merchant shop and a barn, was sold to Phineas Camp in 1785 by his brother, Elnathan Camp, who had in turn bought the then new house from their father, John Camp, Jr., in 1760. In 1794, Phineas Camp sold the property to Phineas Squire, who then sold it back to Elnathan Camp. In 1808, Elnathan’s son, Sylvester Camp, sold it to Deacon Seth Seward, a wealthy shoemaker. The house then passed through many owners in the nineteenth century, during which time a Greek Revival addition was built on the southeast corner.

Frederick G. Platt House (1886)

The distinctive home, built in 1886 for Frederick G. Platt, is located at 25 Court Street in New Britain. With its prominent tower decorated with ornamental terra cotta, the house is a striking example of the High Victorian Gothic style. Frederick G. Platt was president of the New Britain Lumber and Coal Company, incorporated in 1871, and secretary-treasurer of the Railroad Block Company. As explained in David N. Camp’s History of New Britain (1889), “The Railroad Block Company, which consisted principally of stockholders of the New Britain Lumber and Coal Company, was organized under the law relating to joint stock corporations, in 1881, with a capital of $24,000, to build a business block. The land purchased for the purpose was on Main Street, north of the railway, and the building erected is known as the Railroad Block. H. P. Strong is president, and F. G. Platt secretary and treasurer of the company.” Platt was also president of the New Britain Machine Company. In 1895, responding to changing tastes in architecture, Platt sold his house and built a new one on Grove Hill in the Colonial Revival style. The next owner of the house on Court Street was Harriet H. Merwin, widow of Charles P. Merwin of the Berlin Steam Brick Works. Attached for many years to a hardware store, the house was restored in 1987 and is now used for offices.

Former Parsonage of the First Congregational Church of Cromwell (1835)

Former parsonage

The former parsonage of the First Congregational Church in Cromwell was constructed in 1834-1835 on Main Street. It was the second of three buildings to be constructed by the Church at the time, following the Academy building of 1834 and preceding the Meeting House of 1840. All three buildings are brick and in the Greek Revival style. The house remained a parsonage until the Church sold it to a private owner in 1965. The house’s Stick style circular side porch is a later addition. (more…)

The Daniel Beadle Capron House (1850)

According to the 1867 history, by Alfred Andrews, of the First Congregational Church of New Britain, Daniel Beadle Capron was born in 1813 in Broadlebin, New York. Having moved to New Britain, “he has been a mechanic, but in 1862 was in merchandise on Washington st., and now, in 1867, in shoe and harness business on Main st.” Capron‘s Italianate-style house, built around 1850, originally stood on the corner of High and West Main Street, but was moved, in 1906, further down High Street to make way for the building of the First Baptist Church. The house later served as a funeral home, then the offices of an architectural firm and the city’s Health Department.