A sign on the house at 285 Bantam Lake Road in Morris names the building Holiday Farm and gives it a date of 1827. There are numerous postcards from the early twentieth century with images of the Holiday Farm House, described as being on the “West Shore, Bantam Lake,” indicating it was one of the numerous guest houses of the time where vacationers lodged by the lake. There was also a treehouse on the property.
(more…)
Yesterday I posted about the Gordon S. Miller Farm Museum in North Branford. The museum is located adjacent to the Historical Society’s Reynolds-Beers House and the Atwater Memorial Library. The oldest section of the Library was built in 1942-1943 on the site of the town’s old Training Ground. The library was built with funds left to the town by a grandson of the Rev. Charles Atwater, the third minister of the North Branford Congregational Church. An addition to the library was constructed in 1967.
One of the properties of the Totoket Historical Society in North Branford is the Gordon S. Miller Farm Museum. Housed in a traditional New England barn constructed in 2002, the museum collection contains farm machinery and farm implements used in Northford and North Branford going back over two centuries, as well as artifacts discovered in local archeological digs sponsored by the society. The museum is named for Gordon S. Miller, a long time resident of Northford and a former President of the Totoket Historical Society.
The Catholic parish in Pomfret began as a mission of Sacred Heart Church in West Thompson. Services were held in Pomfret Hall before Most Holy Trinity Church was erected in 1885-1887. The church originally stood on Woodstock Road. In 1973 it was moved to its current location at 568 Pomfret Street, at the intersection of Deerfield Road. A house already standing at the new property, built c. 1800 and remodeled in the Colonial Revival style c. 1890, became the church’s rectory.
The Connecticut Colony for Epileptics was established in Mansfield in 1909. At that time, it was believed that people with epilepsy should be segregated in a “colony” where there daily lives would be carefully regulated. The Colony was located in a rural area and included a farm that supplied the institution with food and provided occupational therapy. An older cross-gable brick farmhouse, built in 1870, became the Superintendent’s house. In 1917, the Colony merged with the Connecticut Training School for the Feeble-Minded in Lakeville and the resulting institution, the Mansfield Training School and Hospital, continued in operation until 1993. The school’s campus would grow to include over fifty buildings. The Superintendent’s house was remodeled in 1931 with the addition of two 2-story wings and an entry portico. The building later served as the Administration Building and then as the Physical Plant. When the school closed, some of the buildings were demolished and the rest were divided between the Bergin Correctional Institution and the University of Connecticut, which uses the property as its Depot Campus. The former Superintendent’s House is on what was the Bergin Correctional Institution‘s property at 251 Middle Turnpike (Route 44). The prison closed in 2011 and the land was transferred to UCONN in 2015.
The building at 52 Old Post Road in Old Saybrook was built in the 1830s and began as a one-story carpenters workshop used by the builders of the First Church of Christ on Main Street. When the church was completed, the building was moved from the town green to a site on Old Boston Post Road and a second story was added. For a time, Frederick Kirtland had a shoe store in the building. In its second location, the building stood east of where Thomas C. Acton would build a library in 1873. Acton, who had bought the house across the street, also acquired the former church workshop in 1870 and at some point thereafter it was moved to its current location west of the library. In 1903, Acton rented the building to the Masons of Siloam Lodge No. 32. In December, 1907 he sold the building and it was formally purchased by the Masons in February, 1908. The facade of the Masonic Hall has been altered over the years. In the early twentieth century, there was little decoration, but at some point afterwards it was elaborately ornamented with pilasters, dentil moldings and a fan light in the gable. Most of this ornamentation has since been removed (the street number was also changed from 50 to 52). In 2005, Siloam Lodge No. 32 merged with Trinity-Mt. Olive Lodge No. 43 and Pythagoras Lodge No. 45 to form Estuary Lodge No. 43.
The crossroads at the intersection of Burlington, Harmony Hill, and Locust Roads in Harwinton is known as Catlin’s Corners after the family that developed the area in the eighteenth century. In 1739, shortly after Harwinton became a town, land at the intersection had been granted to Abijah Catlin I (1715-1778), whose son, Abijah Catlin II (1747-1813), constructed a house at 1 Harmony Hill Road in 1760. Abijah kept a tavern in the house and also had an adjacent store. In 1795, he built a house for his son, Abijah Catlin III (1779-1836), across the street at 131 Burlington Road. Like his father, Abijah Catlin III was a merchant and farmer. He also manufactured hats, which he sold in the Catlin store. Catlin’s son, Abijah Catlin IV (1805-1891), was a lawyer and served in the state legislature. The house‘s east wing was attached in 1805. It was originally an earlier Catlin farmhouse, built around 1770 on Locust Road. After the wing was moved, another structure, this one dating from before 1739, was also moved from across Locust Road and attached as a rear ell to the 1770 wing. Further additions were made to the house in the twentieth century.
You must be logged in to post a comment.