Jeremiah Hollister built a saltbox house on the west side of Main Street in South Glastonbury in 1736. In 1739, he sold the house to Joseph Tryon. An addition to the house (since removed) served as a Post Office in the nineteenth century. A porch, added in the early twentieth century, was also removed when the house was remodeled in 1976. Since then, the house, which is adjacent to a strip mall, has been used for businesses. (more…)
Rev. Levi Smith of New Milford was the minister of the First Church in South Windsor from 1840 to 1849, the period during which the current church building was constructed. At that time he lived in a house on Old Main Street in East Windsor Hill which is no longer standing. In 1853, he moved into a Greek Revival house down the street which he intended to be his retirement home, but died nine months later (in 1854). Rev. Smith was a supporter of the Theological Seminary, located at that time near his home and later moved to Hartford. He founded two annual scholarships and left his library to the Seminary.
The operatic soprano Rosa Ponselle was born in Meriden in 1897. After following her older sister Carmela into vaudeville, Rosa had an audition at the Metropolitan Opera arranged by Enrico Caruso and began singing there in 1918. She went on to become one of the great sopranos of the last 100 years, retiring in 1937, at the height of her popularity. Rosa Ponselle was born Rosa Ponzillo at 175 Lewis Avenue and a few months later the family moved to 168 Foster Street. In 1900, the family moved to 159 Springdale Avenue, a bungalow-style home which her father, Benardino Ponzillo, began to enlarge, first adding a second floor and an exterior wood staircase and later a third floor. This house was Rosa’s childhood home from her third year and it would remained her parents’ home for the rest of their lives. Rosa Ponselle died in 1981, but can still be heard in recordings. The house is now a multifamily home. There was a Rosa Ponselle Museum in Meriden a few years ago, but it’s now closed.
Joseph Porter, who worked for the Sperry & Barnes meat-packing plant (on Long Wharf) and was an original board member of the Free Public Library, lived in an 1879 Italianate house on Wooster Street in New Haven.
The Giles Hall House, built in 1760, is on South Elm Street in Wallingford. The house is near the site of the birthplace of Giles Hall‘s brother, Lyman Hall. After graduating from Yale, Lyman Hall became a physician in South Carolina and later settled in Georgia. He was a supporter of the Revolution and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence for the State of Georgia.
One of Connecticut’s few examples of an Octagon house (which was popularized by Orson Squire Fowler in the 1850s) is in the Yalesville section of Wallingford. The house, located at 31 New Place Street (and one of two on the street) was built around 1856. (Edits to this entry are in bold).
Captain Joseph Riggs was an active citizen of Derby in the eighteenth century. He managed the area’s first lottery, which raised money for two bridges to cross the Naugatuck River and a highway from Derby to Woodbury. Riggs was also a patriot during the Revolutionary War. The Riggs House, on Elm Street in what is now Ansonia, was built in 1760.
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