Plumtrees School (1867)

The one-room schoolhouse at 72 Plumtrees Road in Bethel was built in 1867 on land donated by Eliza Benedict (1820-1899). It served the Plumtrees District, one of the town’s five school districts at the time. The building was enlarged and a cupola and bell were added in 1881. The school was closed for renovations in 1957 and for the first time electricity and indoor plumbing were installed. The building reopened in 1962 as an elementary school and remained open until 1970. It was then used by the Visiting Nurse Association as a children’s health care clinic. A commission to preserve the school was formed in 2006. Today, the building is owned by the town of Bethel and the Plumtrees School Association has a historical easement to maintain it as an educational museum.

Danbury News Building (1893)

The building at 288 Main Street in Danbury, facing Wooster Square, was once the home of the Danbury News and its famed publisher and editor, James Montgomery Bailey. Known as the “Danbury News Man,” Bailey gained national renown as a humorist and chronicler of local life. He was the author of such books as Life in Danbury: Being a Brief But Comprehensive Record of the Doings of a Remarkable People, Under More Remarkable Circumstances, and Chronicled in a Most Remarkable Manner (1873), The Danbury News Man’s Almanac, and Other Tales (1874), They All Do it: Or, Mr. Miggs of Danbury and His Neighbors (1877), The Danbury Boom!: With a Full Account of Mrs. Cobleigh’s Action Therein! Together with Many Other Interesting Phases in the Social and Domestic History of that Remarkable Village (1880), and the posthumously published History of Danbury, Conn., 1684-1896 (1896), compiled with additions by Susan Benedict Hill.

The building was originally a two-story Italianate Block, erected in 1873. Baily had it remodeled and enlarged in 1893, the year displayed on the structure‘s front facade. As redesigned by architect Philip Sunderland with a new front facade, third floor and tower, the Danbury News Building became a prominent landmark, widely identified with the city. It was once featured on the cover of the New Yorker. The Danbury News merged with the Danbury Times in 1933 and to form The News-Times.

Danbury Post Office (1916)

The Post Office at 265 Main Street in Danbury was erected in 1915-1916. It was designed by Oscar Wenderoth, who was Supervising Architect of the U.S. Department of Treasury from 1912 to 1915, during which time he designed many federal building throughout the country. The Georgian Revival building, which has a stained oak interior, served as the city’s main post office until 1985, when a new main post office facility opened on Backus Avenue. Mail processing operations moved to the Backus location in 2007 and the Main Street office has continued as mostly a retail facility that also accepts mail and has over 800 P.O. boxes. With the Postal Service utilizing only a small portion of the large building, there have been concerns in recent years that the Main Street office might close. Local residents have voiced their support for a post office downtown, if not in the 1916 building, than at an alternative location on or near Main Street.

St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church (1897)

St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church is located at 68 Main Street in East Berlin. It was built in 1897, at a time when East Berlin was experiencing a boom during the heyday of the nearby Berlin Iron Bridge Company. The church was built on land purchased from the East Berlin Building Company. This was a real estate development which rented housing to workers at the Iron Bridge Company, whose principals owned the majority of its stock (60% in 1903). The addition, with a shorter gable roof, to the north of the original section of the church (on the right in the image above), was built in the twentieth century. (more…)

Otis Smith House (1873)

From the mid-nineteenth century, pistols were being manufactured in the Rockfall section of Middlefield in a factory begun by Henry Aston, Ira N. Johnson, Sylvester Bailey, John North and others. The pistol factory burned down in 1879. As related in the History of Middlefield and Long Hill (1883), by Thomas Atkins,

By the burning of the pistol factory Mr. Otis Smith, who was at that time doing quite an extensive business there, lost machinery, tools, stock, and goods. Nothing was saved. In Nov., 1880, Mr. Smith again began manufacturing in P. W. Bennett’s factory, where he remained until July, 1882. In Dec, 1881, he purchased of Ira N. Johnson, the pistol factory property, and erected thereon a three-story brick building, 100 feet long by 30 feet wide, and is now manufacturing a pistol of his own invention known as the “Smith’s revolver;” also several patented articles in the hardware line.

Eight years before he constructed his new factory, which in recent years was restored and converted into a residence by owner Dick Boynton, Otis Smith erected his family residence at 135 Main Street. The French Second Empire-style house and adjacent carriage house were built in 1873. The long Colonial Revival front was probably added in the in the first twenty years of the twentieth century. Smith died in 1924 and the following year his heirs sold the house to Franc and Lillie Rodowic. (more…)

Elisha Case House (1806)

Deacon Elisha Case (1755-1839) built the house at 45 Lawton Road in Canton in 1805-1806. Elisha Case is one of the founding fathers of the town of Canton because he signed the petition to make Canton a separate town from Simsbury in 1806. His house was later owned by George Mills, Newell Minor (c. 1855) and by 1869 by Wells Lawton (1830-1898), who married Eliza Higley. It was then the home of Wells’ son, Fred Lawton, who was born c. 1870. Lawton’s widow, Helen Gilbert Lawton, lived in the house for many years after his death. In 1919, Fred Lawton urged his friend, James Lowell, Sr., to purchase the Higley farm. Lowell would build the Canton Public Golf Course there in 1931.