Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Houses

Albert F. Rockwell House (1876)

Clifford S. Brown was the first owner of an 1876 Queen Anne-style house on Summer Street in Bristol, which was designed by Joel T. Case. Case’s houses are known for having unusual features, with this example having a square corner tower, uncommon for the Queen Anne style. The house was later sold to the inventor Alfred F. Rockwell, who lived there with his wife Nettie. He would later build a large mansion in Bristol, called Brightwood, which has since been destroyed.

Born in Woodhull, New York, Albert Fenimore Rockwell worked at various trades in different places, including several years in Florida in the fruit and hardware businesses. Leaving Florida because of yellow fever, he came to Bristol in 1888 and, in the next year, founded the New Departure Manufacturing Company with his brother Edward. Originally set up to produce a new doorbell based on clockworks, Rockwell’s company would become very successful making bicycle lamps and coaster brakes, which Rockwell patented with Harry P. Townsend. Later, New Departure became the world’s largest producer of ball bearings. Rockwell also produced various automobiles between 1908 and 1911, including the Rockwell taxicab and various Houpt-Rockwell models. In 1913, he was ousted from New Departure, which later became part of General Motors, but went on to purchase the Marlin Firearms Company, manufacturing Marlin-Rockwell machine guns and automatic rifles during the First World War. Before his death in 1925, he donated land for the city to build what is now called the Memorial Boulevard Middle School, on the road called Memorial Boulevard. He also donated the land for Rockwell Park.

S. E. Root House (1870)

We are beginning a week that will cover buildings in Bristol. The home of Samuel Emerson Root on High Street was built in 1870 (According to Bristol Historic Homes, it was built in 1854, although its builder, the inventor Joel T. Case, did not arrive in town until the early 1870s). Root and his partner, Edward Langdon, operated a factory manufacturing clock dials. The house has been altered for use as offices, with a a one-story brick addition being constructed in the twentieth century. The house is now used by the City of Bristol’s Youth Services.

Capt. Charles Francis, Jr. House (1799)

The 1799 house of Capt. Charles Francis, Jr. of Wethersfield is located on Hartford Ave. Wethersfield’s Cove Park lies behind the house, which now serves as the Wethersfield Cove Yacht Club.

The Dr. Elisha N. Sill House (1800)

Dr. Elisha Noyes Sill served in the Revolutionary War and was a town clerk of Windsor and a member of the Connecticut General Assembly. His house, built in 1800, is located in Windsor on Palisado Ave. Dr. Sill was the grandfather of Edward Rowland Sill, a nineteenth-century poet and educator. The Sill property also has a historic barn.

Nehemiah Street House (1769)

Nehemiah Street, a tailor, built his house on Main Street in Farmington in 1769. He was robbed and killed in 1791 in Niagara Falls, where he had driven cattle to sell. In 1829, his house was bought by Leonard Winship, a cabinet maker, who updated the house in the Greek Revival style, altering the roof and adding the attic windows.

Gilbert W. Chapin House (1898)

The 1898 house of Gilbert W. Chapin stands on Farmington Avenue in Hartford, adjacent to the home of Mary Rowell Storrs, widow of Zalmon Storrs who, like Chapin, worked at the Society for Savings. The Chapin House, now used for offices, was designed in the Georgian Revival style by Ernest Flagg. It is less monumental than his plan for the nearby Immanuel Church, built a year later.

Kimberly Mansion (1725)

Kimberly Mansion, on Main Street in Glastonbury, was built sometime in the early eighteenth century by Eleazer Kimberly, a Secretary of the Connecticut Colony. It was purchased in 1790 by Zephaniah Smith, a former Sandemanian minister, who had become a lawyer. He added an addition to the house, with a separate entrance, to serve as his law office. He and his wife, Hannah Hickok , an amateur mathematician and poet, would raise five talented daughters in the house: Hancy, an inventor; Laurilla, an artist; Cyrinthia, a poet; and Julia and Abby, who would become famous political activists in the nineteenth century. Julia was also a scholar who, in 1876, published the first translation of the Bible into English by a woman.

Although they were involved, together with their mother, in Abolitionism in the years before the Civil War, Julia and Abby Smith became known throughout the country in the early 1870s for their stand against the unfair assessment of their land by the Glastonbury tax collector. By this time, the two unmarried elderly sisters were the only survivors of their family and owned the most valuable property in town, but as women they could not vote and so were taxed without representation. They therefore refused to pay taxes until they were granted a say in the use of their money. The tax man then seized and auctioned off their cows to pay the taxes. This incident, and other confrontations that followed, were extensively covered in contemporary newspapers and the sisters became prominent in Women’s Suffrage circles. After two years of legal wrangling, they would eventually win a court judgment in 1876, but not the vote. After Abby’s death, Julia finally married and moved to New Hampshire, at the age of 87!