There were many controversies related to the construction of the Winchester Town Hall building. In 1877, town leaders appropriated funds to build a town hall so as to provide a safe place for the town records. Before most people in town were aware of it, these men had moved quickly to start construction of the building in an area called the Flat, part of the central business district of Winsted. People in other parts of town, who thought that the building was unnecessary and too expensive, felt that promoters of the Flat had stolen a march on the voters, but at a contentious town meeting those who wanted to press on with the building won out. An injunction to halt construction was soon dissolved by the court and the building was completed in 1878. Bitter feelings over the episode continued for many years. The building was expanded in 1887 and 1904 for use by the County Court. Plans for a 25-foot addition on the front of the building fell through in 1910, but when this was finally done in 1927, the structure gained a more convenient entrance at street level.
The house at 16 Main Street in Bethel is thought to have been built circa 1790 by Daniel Barnum, a joiner and cabinetmaker who was the cousin of P. T. Barnum‘s father, Philo. In 1825, Daniel Barnum sold the house to his daughter, Anna, and her husband, John Benedict III. The couple sold the house in 1844 to Dr. Hanford N. Bennett (1818-1868), who sold it in 1853 to another physician, Dr. Ransom Perry Lyon (1826-1863). During the Civil War, Dr. Lyon was a surgeon in the 28th Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry. He died during the siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana. His widow, Sophia, sold the house in 1871 to the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad. The house lost its original large center chimney when the entire building was moved 150 feet west in 1872 to make way for a new rail line along Main Street that connected the Danbury and Norwalk to the Shepaug Railroad. The building was then used as a boardinghouse for railroad workers until 1881, when George M. Cole purchased the house. He built the addition on the east side of the house, as well as the front porch.
The house at 124 West Road in Canton was built in 1797 by Loin Humphrey (1777-1854). Loin was remembered by Sylvester Barbour in his Reminiscences (1908) as “a man of keen mind and an interesting talker. I remember him well; he was a noticeable figure on the street, with his long homemade, straight walking cane, extending above his hand several inches. His sons were men of great intelligence and prominence.” The house has an 80-foot rear ell, the roof which partly covers what was once a separate and perhaps older house. Many of the rooms in the house retain evidence of wall stenciling that was done in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. It is said that the man who did the stenciling boarded at the house.
According to An Architectural History of East Hartford, Connecticut (1989), edited by Doris Darling Sherrow, page 12, the house at 58 Central Avenue in East Hartford was long thought to be a Colonial Revival home built in a neighborhood that was developed in the nineteenth century. A restoration in 1987 revealed it was actually an eighteenth century building, albeit with unusual features for a colonial house in the East Hartford area: it is four bays rather than the usual five and has a double overhang and a side chimney. The house now sits on a brick foundation, typical of the nineteenth century, indicating that it was moved from elsewhere in town to the newly opened Central Avenue. When Edward W. Hayden (1840-1879) acquired the lot where the house now stands from his parents in 1870, period documentation reveals that he had already moved some buildings to the site. Hayden was a Civil War veteran, known for the diary he kept during the conflict. He lived at 1871 Main Street and rented out the house he had moved to Central Avenue. The house is thought to be the Hezekiah Roberts House (built by Hezekiah’s grandfather Benjamin), because Hayden had bought part of the Roberts estate off Main Street. Another house Hayden owned, that stood next to the Roberts House, was the home of his grandfather, Rev. Eliphalet Williams. That house was demolished early in the twentieth century, but its original Connecticut River Valley doorway is now at the Connecticut Historical Society.
The Roberts House began on Main Street with a structure that later became the ell of the later main house. That main house was built circa 1760 and is the one later moved by Hayden to Central Avenue. The Roberts House is described in Joseph O. Goodwin’s East Hartford: Its History and Traditions (1879):
[Benjamin Roberts] lived on the Hezekiah Roberts place. He brought up his family in the rear L of that house, which is very old and has a vast chimney. He afterwards built his main house, with a cellar having unusually solid walls, and a staircase down which hogsheads of rum could be, and probably were, rolled, for some of our citizens were West India traders in those days.
David Miles Hotchkiss (1787-1878) was an educator, civic leader, and abolitionist in the town of Prospect. In 1819-1820, his father, Frederick Hotchkiss, had erected a farmhouse for him at 61 Waterbury Road for a total cost of $660.99. David Hotchkiss operated a boarding school, called the Select Academy, on the house’s second floor. A member of the committee that named the town Prospect (for its high elevation) when it was incorporated in 1827 (the town was formed from the neighboring towns of Waterbury and Cheshire), Hotchkiss then served as a town selectman and in the state legislature. An abolitionist, he contributed to the creation of the Free Soil Party in Connecticut in 1848. The house was inherited by his tenth child, David Bryant Hotchkiss (1853-1903). The building was altered and enlarged over the years, with changes that included the replacement of the original large center chimney with a smaller one in the 1870s. At that same time the original front door was removed, but it was reused in the ell attached to the rear of the house. Three of David Bryant’s children, his son Treat (1888-1957) and two daughters, Ruth (1885-1978) and Mabel (1882-1966), never married and lived in the house until their deaths. The siblings left the house and surrounding property, which includes the Hotchkiss Farm, to their nieces, Nellie and Ruth Cowdell, who then sold it to the town of Prospect in 1980. Upon their deaths, the town received a bequest from the sisters towards the maintenance of the house, which is now the headquarters of the Prospect Historical Society.
You must be logged in to post a comment.