Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Houses

Whitehall Mansion (1771)

The earliest structure built on the original site of Whitehall Mansion, located in the section of Mystic which is in the town of Stonington, was constructed around 1680 by Lt. William Gallup. A tavern and stagecoach stop stood on the site in the 1750s. Whitehall Mansion, named after an ancestor’s home, Whight House, in Essex, England, was built in 1771-1775 by Dr. Dudley Woodbridge (who, in his youth, had made an interesting sketch of buildings in Deerfield, Massachusetts). A secret room in the attic may have housed runaway slaves. Dr, Woodbridge died in 1790 and the house was later owned by the Rodman and Wheeler families. The Mansion‘s last resident, Florence Grace Keach, donated the house to the Stonington Historical Society in 1962 in order to save it from demolition when Interstate-95 was being constructed. The house was moved approximately one hundred yards north and restored. For a time, it was open for tours, but was purchased by the Waterford Hotel Group in 1996 and is now the Whitehall Mansion Inn.

The Nehemiah Hubbard House (1744)

Across from the Harriet Cooper Lane House in Middletown is the Nehemiah Hubbard House, a center-chimney Colonial saltbox, built in 1744. Nehemiah Hubbard, Jr., who was born in 1752 and was a later owner of the house, was a fourth-generation descendant of early settlers of Middletown. A prominent merchant, he served as Deputy Quartermaster for Middletown during the Revolutionary War and was the first president of the Middletown Bank. He was also the original land-owner in what would become Hubbard, Ohio. Hubbard used his Middletown house and extensive property, which was away from the center of town, for his farming operations and it remained in his family into the twentieth century. For a time, Thomas McDonough Russell, Sr. lived in the house and in 1916, it was acquired by Colonel Clarence Wadsworth. Restored in 1929, the house remained in the Wadsworth family until 1952. Still a private home, the property has a garden established in 1956.

The Harriet Cooper Lane House (1741)

Now located at the entrance to Laurel Grove Road in Middletown, the Harriet Cooper Lane House (named for a long-time occupant) originally stood on Main Street in Durham. The house was built by Robert Smithson in 1741 and was moved to Middletown in 1957.

The Mather-Douglas House (1811)

The Mather-Douglas House was built around 1811-1813, on South Main Street, off South Green in Middletown. It is a Federal style house with later Italianate additions. Built by a Mather, a later owner of the house was Benjamin Douglas, who was a factory-owner and politician. He was a founder of the W. & B. Douglas foundry company (Wesleyan’s Douglas Cannon was named after him) and he was a member of the state general assembly and mayor of Middletown from 1849 to 1855. He was an abolitionist and there is “strong circumstantial evidence” that his house was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

The Wadsworth Mansion at Long Hill Estate (1911)

Starting in 1900, after he married Katharine Fearing Hubbard, Colonel Clarence S. Wadsworth began to acquire land in the rural western section of Middletown for his estate. Known as Long Hill, it eventually grew to 600 acres and featured landscaping designed in part by John Charles Olmsted. The estate also included the $90,000 Wadsworth Mansion, built between 1909 and 1911. Designed by Francis Hoppin, the architect of Edith Wharton’s home, the Mount, the mansion was ahead of its time in the use of reinforced structural concrete and fireproofing. It was occupied by the Wadsworths as a summer home, until the Colonel died in 1941. He bequeathed it to the Rockfall Corporation, which he had established in 1935— an organization dedicated to natural resource conservation, preservation and development. Part of the Estate became Wadsworth Falls State Park, while the house and remainder of the Estate was sold in 1947 to Our Lady of the Cenacle, an order of nuns. Sold to a developer in 1986, the building fell into disrepair and was vandalized. A fire in 1990 almost destoyed the house, which was saved owing to its reinforced concrete. Purchased by the City of Middletown in 1994, the Mansion was restored and opened in 1999 as a facility available for weddings and other functions.

Franklin Goodspeed House (1837)

Franklin Goodspeed was a druggist in Portland. He and his wife, Julia Patten Goodspeed, lived in an 1837 Greek Revival house on Main Street. (more…)

Albert Morgan House (1900)

In 1898, Edward and Abbie Buck sold a lot on Hartford Avenue in Wethersfield to Albert Morgan and his house was built soon afterward (around 1900). I don’t know if this is the Albert Morgan associated with the Albert Morgan Archeological Society. The house passed through other owners and was acquired by Charles H. Robbins in 1923. His, daughter Ethel, resided there until 1972, when she moved to Armsmear in Hartford. An “M” for Morgan on the house’s chimney support was inadvertently placed upside down when the chimney was rebuilt in 1973.