The Squire Beach House, on South Main Street in Cheshire, was built by Samuel Beach, a lawyer and prominent citizen who was a leader in establishing Cheshire as a seperate town from Wallingford. His son, Burrage Beach, was a lawyer and a director of the Farmington Canal. The house, which resembles the Foote House across the street, originally faced South Main. In 1986, the house became a restaurant and was moved and turned so that its gable end now faces the street.
The Russell Cooke House, on South Main Street in Cheshire, was built in 1801 and was originally both a residence and shop. When the builder, Russell Cooke, left for Ohio in 1805, others ran the shop, which was converted into a tavern in 1850 by William Horton. Later still, it was a hotel and a school. Today it is used as a law office. The gambrel-roofed building has a traditional colonial form, but with applied Federal-style details.
The Hitchcock-Phillips House, on Church Drive in Cheshire, dates to 1785. The Georgian-style house was built by Rufus Hitchcock, a merchant and leading citizen of Cheshire. A wing was added to the house around 1820 by Hitchcock’s son, William Rufus Hitchcock, who lived there until 1834. The house was next occupied by his sister, Lucretia and her husband, Rev. Peter Clark. Their daughter married A.W. Phillips, a Cheshire Academy instructor and later a Yale professor. They used the house as a summer home until 1907. The three dormer windows were added in 1925. The house was later used by Cheshire Academy as a dorm and was purchased by the town in 1972 to become the museum of the Cheshire Historical Society.
The saltbox house of Deacon Stephen Hotchkiss, on South Main Street in Cheshire, was built in stages, beginning around 1730. Hotchkiss was one of the founders of Cheshire as a separate parish from Wallingford. (more…)
The Foote House, on South Main Street in Cheshire, was built in 1767 for Rev. John Foot (d. 1813), the second minister of the town’s First Congregational Church. John Foot‘s son, Samuel Augustus Foot, was born in the house in 1780. Samuel A. Foot(e), who studied at Yale and with Tapping Reeve in Litchfield, went on to become a US Representative, Senator and Governor of Connecticut. Foot continued to live in the 1767 house, adding a Greek Revival portico to the entryway in the 1830s. Gov. Foote’s son, Andrew Hull Foote, was an admiral in the US Navy during the Civil War.
The house originally occupied by Seth Stanley is in Berlin, at 155 Robbins Road, off Kensington Road. The house was built in 1750.
Built in 1847 (some sources indicate 1861), the Ira H. Palmer House, at the corner of High and Main Streets in Stonington Borough, is transitional in style between the Greek Revival and Italianate. It was built by John F. Trumbull, who owned a factory in town, for his daughter, Harriet, who married Ira Hart Palmer.
