Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Houses

Solomon Goffe House (1711)

The oldest house in Meriden is the Solomon Goffe House on North Colony Street. As explained in A Century of Meriden (1906):

We know nothing about Mr. Goffe except that he lived here ten years, married a Wallingford girl. Mary Doolitlle, and the birth of one child is recorded. In 1721 he sold the place to Thomas Andrews, of Wallingford, who, apparently, lived there until 1729, when he sold it to Jonathan Collins, of Middletown. The old house was enlarged, perhaps soon after Mr. Collins bought it, for the addition looks as old as the rest, but that there has been an addition is plain to be seen. The dormer windows in the old gambrel roof are probably a later addition, and there have been apparently some changes in the interior. That the house is the one built by Solomon Goffe will be apparent to any one who will examine the old rafters and the huge floor beams. The chimneys in the cellar are enormous and the stones were cemented with clay mixed with straw as were the foundation walls, a sure sign of an early house; another indication of age is the split laths, used in very early houses. The Collins family continued to own the house until 1796 when a son, Jonathan, Jr., sold it to Samuel Taylor of Chatham. Mr. Taylor doubtless lived in it until 1806 when he sold it to his son-in-law, Partrick Clark.

Now owned by the City of Meriden, the house is a museum, open by appointment.

On New London Road in Mystic is a house built by Capt. Jonathan Wheeler in 1810. In 1829, the house was acquired by Lyman Dudley, a blacksmith who built a foundry across the street. Perhaps it was when Dudley owned the house that it was modified in the Greek Revival style. A bay window on the side was also added later in the nineteenth century.

Smith-Harris House (1845)

A Greek Revival house with an elaborate window in its front gable, the Smith-Harris House in East Lyme was most likely built in 1845 by John Clark for Thomas Avery. The house was later occupied by Avery’s son, William, and after his death, it was sold to William H. H. Smith, who used it as a summer home. In 1921, he sold it to his brother and nephew, Herman Smith and Frank Harris, who had married two sisters. After the deaths of their husbands, the sisters continued to reside in the house, until they relocated to a nursing home. The house was left vacant and was deteriorating when a group of citizens urged the town to save and restore the house. A restoration committee was appointed in 1974 and the restored house opened as East Lyme’s Town Museum in 1976.

Albert G. Stark House (1850)

Albert G. Stark, a businessman who owned a general store, built an Octagon house on West Mystic Avenue in 1850, adjacent to the home of his brother, the ship captain, Henry S. Stark. Albert died at age 29 and his widow remained in the house and eventually remarried.

Capt. Henry S. Stark House (1852)

The 1852 Italianate home of Capt. Henry S. Stark and his wife, Mary Rathbun Stark, is on West Mystic Avenue in Mystic. Mary Stark supervised the construction because her husband, a ship captain, was in command of a bark voyaging to Italy. The avenue was called Skipper Lane because many ship captains built homes there. Capt. Stark also made voyages to Mexico and Hawaii. His wife accompanied him on his voyage to Honolulu from 1854 to 1856 on the clipper ship B.F. Hoxie. Mary Stark wrote a series of letters during the voyage, many to her daughter, Lizzie Stark, describing her experiences.

Amos C. Tift House (1851)

Amos C. Tift, who died at Mystic. Connecticut, at the age of seventy-six in 1883, was a merchant by occupation and had exceptional business capacity. He was quite well known in the South, especially at Key West, Florida.

So writes Lucian Lamar Knight in A Standard History of Georgia and Georgians, Vol. 6 (1917). Amos Chapman Tift of Mystic is mentioned in a book about Georgia because his son, Henry Harding Tift, was the founder of Tifton, in Tift County, Georgia. The county, created in 1905, was named for Nelson Tift, a brother of Amos, who had settled in Georgia, become a successful entrepreneur and politician, and founded the city of Albany in 1835. Henry H. Tift joined his uncle‘s company and later founded Tifton when he opened a sawmill there in 1872. He was involved in many business ventures and was a philanthropist dedicated to promoting education. As the book quoted above explains:

He was a man who, realizing the great wealth of natural resources not only in timber but in agricultural lines, established sawmills, built railroads, caused the establishment of agricultural experiment stations, colonized the country with sturdy and thrifty farmers, and lent his personal agency and his material resources to the steady development of this portion of the state.

The Amos C. Tift House, which was the childhod home of Henry Harding Tift, was built around 1851 on High Street in Mystic. Henry H. Tift’s later house in Tifton, built in 1887, is part of the Georgia Agrirama, an agricultural and historical museum village.

The Orrin Shailer II House (1856)

The Orrin Shailer II House, on Saybrook Road in the Shailerville section of Haddam, is a clapboarded Greek Revival house, which interestingly has a front door that is not placed in one of the outer bays of the facade. The house was built in 1856 by Orrin Shailer II on land sold to him by his father, Joseph Shailer. The gable window was added later in the nineteenth century.