Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Houses

Samuel Parsons House (1759)

Built around 1759, the Samuel Parsons House, on Main Street in Wallingford, once served as a tavern when stage coaches stopped there. Featuring many traditional colonial elements, the house is transitional in style because it also has features of the Georgian style, including its two chimneys and the way its rooms are arranged inside. Caleb Thompson bought the house in 1803 and built wagons, carriages, and coffins in his shop on the property. His granddaughter, Fannie Ives Schember, leased the house to the Wallingford Historical Society in 1919 and later left it to the Society in her will. Owned by the Society since 1932, today the house is a museum.

Erastus Kelsey House (1825)

The Erastus Kelsey House, on Main Street in Portland, was built in 1925. Born in Killingworth in 1792, Kelsey married Betsey Deane around 1814. She was the daughter of Phineas Dean, a tavern keeper who also lived on Main Street. Another daughter of Phineas Deane, Harriet, married William McKinstry, a wealthy Middletown merchant.

Smith-Hayden House (1834)

Another of the houses built by Gurdon Smith on Pratt Street in Essex is this one dating to 1834. The house was later owned by Richard Sill Hayden and passed to his son, Gilbert Burnet Hayden, who was a lighthouse keeper in Essex and died in 1929.

Gurdon Smith House (1818)

A Federal-style house, built by Gurdon Smith on Pratt Street in Essex in 1818, is one of several he built on the street. Smith was one of the developers of Pratt (then called New) Street, which was opened after the land north of Main Street, long owned by the Lay family, became available. The street runs between the original locations of Essex’s two successive ropewalks. Smith was a part-owner of the second ropewalk, which was located just north of Pratt Street.

Miles Messenger House (1785)

A beam in the attic of the Messenger House, 667 Cherry Brook Road in Canton, is inscribed with the words: “RAISED 1785 JUNE 20 MONDAY.” In the days when stagecoach used to pass by the house, it was used as an inn. Also, at one time, there was an apple orchard and cider mill on the property. Miles Messenger owned the house in the mid-twentieth century and, after the steeple of the Old North Church in Boston blew down during Hurricane Carol in 1954, Mr. Messenger gave a white oak from his farm to help rebuild it.

The Stone House, Deep River (1840)

The Stone House in Deep River (which was known as Saybrook until 1947) was built in 1840 by Deacon Ezra Southworth for he and his new wife, Eunice Post Southworth. The house was built using stone quarried on the property. The original flat tin roof was later replaced by a gabled roof. A rear addition was constructed in 1881, just before the marriage of the Southworth’s son, Ezra Job Birney Southworth, to Fanny Shortland of Chester. The wraparound porch was added to the house in 1898. Deacon Ezra’s granddaughter, Ada Southworth Munson, who died in 1946, bequeathed the property to the Deep River Historical Society. It is now a house museum open to the public. On the property, there is also a late nineteenth century barn (now called the carriage house) and a section from an old bleach house, owned by Pratt, Read & Co., which was used for whitening ivory. At one time, Pratt Read in Deep River and Comstock, Cheney & Co. in Ivoryton, dominated the ivory products manufacturing industry in the U.S.

Josiah Hotchkiss House (1744)

Historically associated with Josiah Hotchkiss, a tavern-keeper in Cheshire, the house at 589 South Main Street is believed to have been built by him around 1744. The building’s lack of a protruding summer beam, however, might suggest a later date of construction.