Henry B. Graves House (1858)

Henry Bennett Graves (1823-1891) was a lawyer in Litchfield who served several terms in the state General Assembly. He was also executive secretary to Governor Henry Dutton and he married the governor’s daughter, Mary Dutton. His second wife was Sarah Smith of Morris. In 1858 Graves built a Greek Revival house at 153 South Street in Litchfield. The house was sold to Cornelius M. Ray of Morris in 1865.  After his death, the house passed to his daughter, Clara Belle Ray.  The Ray family made alterations to the house, including the addition of the mansard roof and the south bay. Elizabeth Shields Hamlin bought the property in 1910. In the collection of the Litchfield Historical Society are blueprints for the building of a garage, an extension of the dining room, and other alterations to the house, made by Ross & McNeil, architects of New York. They were hired by Elizabeth’s husband, Elbert B. Hamlin in 1915. After her husband’s death in 1936, Elizabeth Hamlin sold the house in 1937.

J. H. Hale Office (1910)

Instead of im”peach”ment, today’s building relates to the “peach king” of Glastonbury, J. H. Hale. I’ve mentioned him before in two posts. One was about the home of his grandfather, Ebenezer Hale, at 1378 Main Street and the other was about the home that J. H. Hale built at 1420 Main Street in 1911. At the Hale farm, John Howard Hale (1853-1917) and his brother George started a peach orchard where John H. developed a hardy type of peach that could endure the New England climate. The business soon grew to a national scale, with orchards in Glastonbury and Georgia. As described in Men of Mark in Connecticut (1906):

He was the first American orchardist to sort, grade, and pack fruit, and label and guarantee it according to its grade. He was the first in America to use trolley transportation in the fruit business, and is one of the very few Americans who ship peaches to Europe. He is fittingly called the “Father of Peach Culture in New England.”

Adjacent to Hale’s mansion is the colonial revival-style building at 1404 Main Street, which served as the farm’s office. As it is not indicated on a 1909 map of the Hale Farm, it was most likely built c. 1910, around the same time as the mansion. By 1920, a roadside stand in front of the building sold J. H. Hale peaches. The office later became a private residence. Among its first occupants were J. H. Hale’s grandson, John Hale, and his wife Alice.

James Gladwin House (1810)

James Gladwin (1774-1850), a farmer in the Higganum section of Haddam, purchased a tract of land along what is now Saybrook Road in 1806. Soon thereafter, around 1810, he built the house at 352 Saybrook Road for his new wife, Margaret Tripp. They had twelve children, nine boys and three girls. After Gladwin’s death, the other siblings quitclaimed the house to his youngest daughter, Julia Ann Taylor, wife a Warren Taylor, a farmer who also owned a livery stable. The house was sold out of the family in 1875. Julia Gladwin Taylor later lived in Clinton and died in 1909 at the age of 85.

George Greenman House (1898)

According to the nomination for the Mechanic Street Historic District in Stonington, the house at 117 West Broad Street in Pawcatuck is known as the George Greenman House. This George Greenman must have been related to the Greenman family of shipbuilders in Mystic and Westerly. In 1827 Silas Greenman, 3rd had joined with his brother George in a ship-building business in Mystic, but he moved to Westerly, Rhode Island (adjacent to Pawcatuck) in 1834. George continued shipbuilding in Mystic, partnering with his brothers, Clark and Thomas. Silas established a shipyard in Westerly called Silas Greenman & Company. He was later joined by his son, George S. Greenman, born in 1826. Could the owner of the house at 117 West Broad Street have been a grandson or other relative?

Planter & Porter Boarding House (1854)

In 1848, William Planter and Samuel Q. Porter purchased the Stone and Carrington paper mill in Unionville. They soon built another mill and in 1860 organized the Planter & Porter Manufacturing Company, which produced fine writing paper and book paper. As one of Unionville’s largest employers, they needed housing for their workers and erected at least five rental houses in the neighborhood. They erected the rooming and boarding house at 28 Elm Street in 1854. Franklin C. Chamberlin, a Hartford lawyer, bought the building in 1878 and continued to rent its rooms out to local factory workers. In 1889 the house became the residence of Thomas Mulrooney, an Irish immigrant who worked at the American Writing Paper Company (which had acquired Planter & Porter in 1877), and his wife Mary Jane Mulrooney, who was born in Burlington to Irish immigrant parents. Mrs. Mulrooney rented out rooms in the house to supplement the family’s income. The house remained in the family until 1941.

Former Methodist Church, Unionville (1926)

In the early nineteenth century, Methodists in Unionville traveled to Burlington for services. Eventually they began to hold their own meetings in Unionville on the second floor of the Tryon and Sanford store at the intersection of Main and Lovely Streets. Unionville soon grew as a population center and a number of Methodists in Burlington eventually joined their coreligionists in Unionville to build a church on Farmington Avenue in 1867 (near the site that would later have a Friendly’s restaurant). By the 1920s, the Methodists had outgrown their church building and they erected a new one on School Street, on a site where the Solomon Richards Mansion, one of the grandest in Unionville, had been taken down in 1925. Completed the following year, the church, built by local builder John Knibbs, displays the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement. Sometimes called the “Stone Church,” it’s design was modeled on the Lake Mahopec Methodist Church in Mahopec, New York. In 1929 the church officially adopted the name of “Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church.” A parish hall to the rear was erected in 1959. Urban renewal in Unionville in the late 1960s provided the opportunity for the church, now called Memorial United Methodist Church, to relocate again, this time to West Avon Road in Avon. The former church in Unionville is now used by the Town of Farmington as a Youth Center.

Willimantic Linen Company Office (1866)

Standing in front of the former Willimantic Linen Company’s Mill No. 2 in Willimantic is a smaller stone structure, built in 1866, that once served as the office building housing the company‘s executives and bookkeepers. The building originally had windows with accents of colored glass. The interior featured marble mantels, woodwork of chestnut and walnut, and plaster ceiling moldings. All that survives of the interior finishes today is a marble mantel on the west wall.

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