Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Houses

Isaac Goodell House (1828)

The house at 318 Phoenixville Road in Chaplin was built c. 1828 by Isaac Goodell. It was later owned by Lester Bill and Newell C. Hunt. Jesse Hunt sold the house to George England in 1905.

The house at 4 Oakland Street in Bristol was built in 1917 and came to be well-known as an exemplar of the Colonial/Georgian Revival style after it was featured in the Christmas 1920 issue of House Beautiful (“An Adaptation of the Colonial House,” by Alexander E. Hoyle). Designed by Goodell & Root, the house was built for Newell Jennings (1883-1965), who (starting in 1910) practiced law with his uncle, Roger S. Newell, in the firm of Newell & Jennings. The year the house was built, Jennings was appointed assistant state attorney. He was later a Hartford Superior Court judge.

Edwin Griswold House (1838)

Edwin Griswold (1813-1897) built the house at 33 Main Street in Ivoryton in 1838, on land he had purchased from his father, Daniel Griswold. Edwin was the partner of Samuel Merritt Comstock in the combmaking firm of Comstock & Griswold. Comstock had a house nearly identical to Griswold’s built at the same time on the other side of Bracket Lane. In 1903 the house was acquired by Clarence Bushnell. He and Linwell Behrens were bicycle salesmen who in 1904 started Behrens and Bushnell, one of the first auto dealerships in Middlesex County. The house was later owned by Comstock, Cheney & Co. and was also a parsonage of the Ivoryton Congregational Church.

Abner Kirtland House (1767)

The house at 19 Union Street in Deep River was built c. 1767 by Lieut. Abner Kirtland (1745-1834). He was the son of Capt. Philip Kirtland (1693-1764), one of the first settlers of what would become Deep River. Abner Kirtland served in the Revolutionary War, being commissioned 1st Lt. in Col. William Worthington’s Regiment of the 7th Conn. Militia in 1780.

Capt. Dolbeare House (1855)

The Capt. Dolbeare House, located at 70 North Cove Road in Old Saybrook, is an 1855 ship captain’s home. The house was enlarged and remodeled in 1931, at which time the two-story colonnade on the west gable end was most likely added. The house was renovated by developer John Aldi in the 1990s.

Stanley-Woodruff-Allen House (1752)

The red saltbox house at 37 Buena Vista Road in West Hartford was built about 1752 by Samuel Stanley for his son, also named Samuel, who married Joanna Goodman in 1754. It was later owned by members of the Woodruff and Allen families and in 1943 was purchased by West Hartford to be a caretakers house for the town’s golf course. In 1976 the West Hartford Art League began leasing the building, which was restored to become the Saltbox Gallery.

Theophilus Jones House (1740)

Theophilus Jones (1690-1781) moved to Wallingford in 1711. He built up his farm property and c. 1740 built a house on Cook Hill, in the southwest corner of town, now 40 Jones Road. His son, Theophilus Jones, Jr. (1723-1815), continued to amass land and was one of the few residents of Wallingford who owned slaves. Three more generations of this wealthy family would farm the property until it was turned over to tenant farmers and then eventually sold in 1914. It continued as a dairy farm until 1937, when it was acquired by Charles F. Montgomery (1910-1978), a leading authority on American decorative arts. He undertook the restoration of the house and lived there until 1950, when he left Wallingford to become a curator at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum in Delaware. He was appointed the museum’s director in 1954. In addition to the Jones House itself, the site in Wallingford has a number of outbuildings, including a woodshed and a barn, carpentry shop, carriage house and cider mill complex, all original to the farm. There’s also an icehouse and a pigeon house, moved to the property by Montgomery from Middletown.