Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Houses

Osborne Homestead Museum (1840)

The Osborne Homestead Museum is adjacent to the Kellogg Environmental Center and the Osbornedale State Park in Derby. It was originally a farm house built in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1867, Wilbur Fisk Osborne married Ellen Lucy Davis and the couple moved into the house. Osborne’s father, John White Osborne, had founded a brass manufacturing company in Derby which came to dominate the eyelet manufacturing business. Wilbur F. Osborne served as president of various companies and also founded the Derby Neck Library, persuading Andrew Carnegie to assist in funding the library building’s construction. The Osbornes‘ only surviving child was Frances Eliza Osborne, who became a businesswoman, taking over her father’s responsibilities after his sudden death in 1907. In 1919, she married Waldo Stewart Kellogg, a New York architect. Starting in 1910, a Colonial Revival remodeling project began on the house, with additional detailing work done by Waldo Kellogg. The homestead now resembles a Federal-style house. Frances Osborne Kellogg continued to live in the house until her death in 1956. She had deeded her property to the State of Connecticut in 1951 and it became the Osbornedale State Park. The land was once home to the Osbornedale Dairy, which was run by Waldo Kellogg, who improved the herd after the acquisition of a prize bull. The house is open to the public as the Osborne Homestead Museum.

A.L. Sessions House (1903)

Counting down to the New Year makes one think of clocks and Bristol was the center of Connecticut Clock-making. One of the Bristol firms was the E.N. Welch Company, which by the later nineteenth century was in financial difficulty. In 1902, William E. Sessions, whose father owned a foundry business that had produced cases for E.N. Welch, was elected president of the company and his nephew, Albert L. Sessions, became its treasurer. By the following year, they had acquired enough stock to take over the company, renaming it the Sessions Clock Company. During this same period, A.L. Sessions, had become a partner with his father, John Henry Sessions, in the family’s trunk hardware-making business, J.H. Sessions & Son. After his father’s death in 1902, the business was then incorporated in 1905 under a special charter by the state of Connecticut, the sole owners being A.L. Sessions, his mother and his wife. William E. Sessions built the mansion, called Beleden, on Bellevue Avenue in Bristol and his nephew, A.L. Sessions, built his own mansion in 1903 on the same street. The Georgian Revival home, constructed of brick and red sandstone, is said to have been designed by a Waterbury architect who had been sent by Sessions to England to study Georgian architecture before beginning to plan the house. Known in Bristol as the “Wedding Cake” House, it later became the Town Club and is now the DuPont Funeral Home.

Joseph Remer House (1830)

Joseph Remer was a businessman and selectman in Derby. His house on Elm Street, in what is now Ansonia, was built around 1830 in the Greek Revival style, but has later additions, including an Italianate tower.

The Joseph Moseley House (1735)

The Moseley family had already been living on its property, along Main Street in Glastonbury, for a generation when the current house was built in 1735. The Joseph Moseley House served as both a house and tavern until 1840. The home was purchased in 1879 by David Carrier.

Amasa Adams House (1770)

The Amasa Adams House, built in 1770, is on Maple Street in Wethersfield. In 1760, Amasa Adams became a part owner in the old Chester Mill, on Two Stone Brook in the Griswoldville section of Wethersfield. Begun by Leonard Chester in 1637, the mill became known as Adams Mill in 1782 and was run by Amasa and then his sons, John and Joshua Adams. Serving as a cider, lumber and grist mill, the Adams Mill survived into the twentieth century.

The William Lewis House (1850)

William Lewis was the partner of Nelson Hotchkiss in a company which produced sashes and blinds. The partners also developed real estate along Chapel Street in New Haven, each building a house there in 1850. In 1854, Hotchkiss built a second house down the street. The Lewis House, like the two Hotchkiss houses, may be the work of New Haven architect Henry Austin, or at least inspired by his designs.

Horchow Hall (1859)

Yale University’s Horcow Hall, on Hillhouse Avenue in New Haven, was originally built in 1859 as a house for Pelitiah Perit, a merchant. It was the first home on the street to be painted brown. The architect was Sidney Mason Stone, the father of Margaret Sidney, author of the Five Little Peppers series of children’s books). A third floor was added to the Renaissance-Revival home in the 1860s and a large rear wing was added by Henry L. Hotchkiss, who acquired the house in 1888. In the 1930s, the house was purchased by Yale and became an annex for the Peabody Museum and the Bingham Oceanographic Laboratory. In the 1960s, it became a faculty residence and in 1984, renamed Horchow Hall, it was renovated to become one of the buildings of Yale’s School of Management.