Norwalk City Hall (1938)

The current City Hall of Norwalk (125 East Avenue) was built in 1938 as Norwalk High School. Its original entrance, since altered, faced East Avenue. It and other buildings in Norwalk contain one of the largest collections of WPA Depression era murals in the country (45). Twenty-three of the City Hall murals were restored in the 1980s. Others were brought to the building bringing the total on display there to thirty-one (now thirty after the recent removal of a controversial painting). The High School moved to a new building in 1971 and the 1938 building became City Hall in place of the 1912 City Hall in South Norwalk (which became home to the Norwalk Museum until 2011).

Arthur Miller – Marilyn Monroe House (1783)

Glimpsed through the trees in the image above is a house that was once the home of two of the most famous people of the twentieth century. Located at 232 Tophet Road in Roxbury, it has been much altered over the years. It was built for a Revolutionary War veteran and was later the residence of playwright Arthur Miller and his wife (from 1956 to 1961) Marilyn Monroe. The couple had originally planned to replace the old farmhouse with a new home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but they decided the plan produced by the famous architect was too impractical and expensive. According to Homes of Old Woodbury (1959), p. 247, the house was built about 1783 by Captain David Leavenworth. Sheldon Leavenworth sold it to Elliot Beardsley in 1847 and twenty years later it was acquired by Charles N. Ward. Frederick H. Leavenworth bought the house in 1888 and his son sold it to Miller in 1949, the year the playwright wrote Death of a Salesman at his first Roxbury home. Miller lived in Roxbury from 1947 until his death in 2005. The Leavenworth House has has remained in Miller’s family. Ten years after his death, his daughter donated a 100-acre parcel to the Roxbury Land Trust.

Bowden Hall, Cheshire Academy (1796)

Bowden Hall, part of the campus of Cheshire Academy, is the oldest schoolhouse still in continuous use in the state of Connecticut. Located at the corner of Academy Road and Highland Avenue in Cheshire, it was erected in 1796 for the Episcopal Academy, which would become the Cheshire School in 1903, the Roxbury School in 1917 and finally Cheshire Academy in 1937. As described in Edwin R. Brown’s Old Historic Homes of Cheshire (1895):

The original academy was erected in the year 1796. This included only the square building north of Bronson Hall; the corner-stone was laid with Masonic honors, April 28, 1796. An address was delivered on this occasion by Rev. Reuben Ives, through whose influence, more than of any other one man, the academy was established [in 1794] at Cheshire. He was followed by Rev. Dr. Bronson [the Academy’s first principal], who delivered an able and appropriate address. This is the oldest institution of its kind in this country, being for many years the most celebrated seat of learning in the State, under the control of the Episcopal Church, and, until the formation of Trinity College, was both college and seminary for this and other dioceses. For several years this institution was open for the instruction of young ladies, and several in this town, and some from other towns, took advantage of this excellent and unusual opportunity for those days.

Until 1865, Bowden Hall was the school‘s only building. Many have been constructed since. In 1867, Bronson Hall was built just north of Bowden Hall and attached to the older building by a passageway. (more…)

16 Barry Road, Oxford (1740)

The house at 16 Barry Road in the Quaker Farms section of Oxford was once thought to have been built as early as 1680, but a date of 1740 is now considered more likely. In the early nineteenth century the house was owned by the Tomlinson family. It was used in the mid-nineteenth century by Preston Hinman for his shoemaking business. Greatly deteriorated by the early twentieth century, Ralph B. Pomeroy purchased it in 1947, removed a later dormer window and undertook the house’s restoration to a colonial appearance.

Scranton Building (1876)

The building at 613-617 Main Street in Middletown was built in 1876 as a business venture by Edwin Scranton. The first tenant was John McIndue, who ran a confectionary and ice cream business. Later occupants were a bottling works and a printing company. The building is now home to St. Vincent de Paul Middletown. Founded in 1980 by the Sisters of Mercy and the Catholic Diocese of Norwich, SVDM is a shelter that serves the poor and homeless in greater Middletown.