Simsbury’s first meeting house was built in 1683 and was used until 1739. A reproduction of that now lost building was constructed in 1970 to serve as the Simsbury Tercentenary Celebration headquarters. It’s design was based on an earlier 1935 reproduction and it contains some windows and the door used on that building. Today, the reproduction Meeting House is a museum building on the grounds of the Simsbury Historical Society.
Durham‘s Greek-Revival Town Hall was built in 1847 to 1849 as the town’s South Congregational Church. When the town’s second meeting house burned in 1836, a split develeoped over where to build the new church. A new meeting house was eventually built again on the Green, but controversy recommenced when this third meeting house burned in 1844. One building, North Church, now Durham’s present United Church, was built north of Allyn’s Brook in 1847, while another meeting house, South Church, was built on the old site on the Green. The town’s two churches reunited in 1886 and South Church was later sold to the town for use as offices. With its steeple removed, the building now serves as Town Hall.
Adjacent to the Center Congregational Church in Manchester is the town’s Municipal Building. The brick and limestone building was constructed in 1926 and is typical of the colonial revival civic architecture of its era.
Built in 1909-1914, the New Haven County Courthouse, facing New Haven Green, is an impressive Neo-Classical building. Designed by New Haven architects William Allen and Richard Williams, the courthouse was modeled on St. George’s Hall in Liverpool and has statuary outside by J. Massey Rhind. Today, the building serves as a state circuit court.
On Main Street in Stonington is a granite Greek Revival building that served as a custom house. Built around 1827, it originally served as a bank. The Stonington Bank was chartered in 1822 and operated until the end of the Civil War. Stonington had some direct trade with the West Indies and was made a Port of Entry in 1842. It was probably around this time the building began to be used as a custom house.
The Buck-Foreman Community Center in Portland houses the town’s police, parks and recreation, and youth services departments. The central section of the brownstone building dates to 1852 and was built in the Italianate style as the home of Jonathan Fuller, part-owner of the Shaler and Hall brownstone quarry. When he died in 1876, his daughter Jane inherited the house. At that time, the Town of Portland was looking for a new and more solid building to use as a town hall, as their current building, a former Episcopal church at the corner of Bartlet and High Streets, was a wooden structure built in 1790 and considered to be unsafe (part of the floor even caved in during a Republican Party caucus in 1894!). When Jane Fuller died in 1894, the town acquired the Fuller House and hired architect David Russell Brown of New Haven to remodel it in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. The wing on the south side of the building was added in 1896 as the Buck Library, donated by Horace Buck, who was originally from Portland and whose three children had died and were buried in town. A matching addition on the north side of the Town Hall was built in 1941. The building continued in use as a Town Hall until 1999.
On Tolland Green is located the Old Tolland County Jail, the earliest surviving section of which dates to 1856. At one time the Jail was attached to a hotel known as the County House (first built in 1786), which could accommodate people who had business at the nearby county court. The hotel was owned by the state, but was managed under contract by a private innkeeper (who was sometimes also the jailer). The court later moved to Rockville in 1888 and the hotel was not rebuilt after it burned in 1893. Instead, it was replaced by a new County House, used primarily as a residence for the jailer and his family. The Victorian building was designed by local builder James Clough. Today, the house and attached jail serve as a museum, operated by the Tolland Historical Society.
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