Schools - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Nova Scotia District School (1853)

The Nova Scotia District School was one of the old one-room district school houses of the Town of Watertown. Originally located at the corner of Fern Hill Road and Route 6, it was built in 1853 and served as a school until 1929. The building was disassembled in 1990 and rebuilt in Munson Park at 17 DeForest Street, behind the Gridley Store and the Munson House. The Old Nova Scotia School House reopened in 1993 as a museum, maintained by the Watertown Historical Society and furnished as it would have been in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Manchester Green School (1923)

The building that was once the Manchester Green Elementary School is located at 549 Middle Turnpike East in Manchester. It was built in 1921-1923. Earlier school buildings had served the village of Manchester Green going back to 1751. Ending its role as an elementary school in 1978, the building was then converted to become the Manchester Senior Center.

Branford Academy (1820)

On a corner of the Green in Branford is the old Academy building, constructed in 1820. This school was established by Rev. Timothy Phelps Gillett, who was pastor of Branford’s Congregational Church from 1808 to 1860. As related in Vol. II of the History of New Haven County (1892), edited by J.L. Rockey:

At Branford village a select school was taught by Reverend Timothy P. Gillett, some time after the war of 1812, which there, also, awakened a desire for schools of a higher grade, and which led to the establishment of an academy, in 1820. Benjamin R. Fowler, Calvin Frisbie, Philemon Tyler, John Beach and others, aided by Mr. Gillett, were active in this movement, and secured the town’s consent to erect the buildings on the south side of the green. A two-story frame house, with a belfry, was put up, which is still standing in that locality. For a number of years Branford Academy had a good reputation, and the stockholders were rewarded by having a school in their midst, which well served its purpose. The academy was continued with varying success until 1866, Miss Jane Hoadley being the last teacher. Others who are remembered as having taught there were: Reverend Gillett, Deacon Samuel Frisbie and Lynde Harrison. The latter was instrumental in securing a school library of several hundred volumes. The upper story of the academy building has long been used as a Masonic hall.

The usefulness of the academy was at an end after the consolidation of the public schools of the town.

The Academy building, which originally stood on the site of the present Town Hall, was moved to the rear of the Congregational Church in 1860. It was sold to the Masons in 1871, but was sometimes rented by the town for overflow school space thereafter. In 1971 the Academy was deeded to the town and in 1974 it was moved to its current site on the Branford Green, at the north-west corner of South Main Street.

Uncasville School – Montville Town Hall (1918)

The building that today serves as the Town Hall of Montville was built in 1917-1918 as the Uncasville School. Located at 310 Norwich-New London Turnpike, it was designed by Wilson Potter, a New York City-based architect of schools throughout the Northeast. A substantial addition (1925), probably also designed by Potter, consists of the two projecting wings that flank the recessed central block that was the original building. Another one-story addition was made in 1953. The school was the gift of Grace Palmer Melcer, a civic leader and daughter of Edward A. Palmer, a local industrialist. It was built at her own expense as a memorial to her mother, Isabel Mitchell Palmer, who died in 1916. With a substantial number of immigrants from Eastern Europe and elsewhere settling in Montville at the time to work in the the area’s mills, the school had a curriculum that emphasized acculturation and integration. The school, now used as the Town Hall, is located next to a 1938-1939 building that had previously been the Montville Town Hall.

Ward-Heitmann House (1725)

The oldest surviving building in West Haven is the Ward-Heitmann House at 277 Elm Street. It may have been built as early as 1684 and was certainly on the site by 1725. The house was built by Ebenezer Clark, who sold it in 1730 to John Humphreville, who had married Clark’s sister Rebecca. The house remained in the Clark family until 1788, when it was purchased by sea captain Thomas Ward (d. 1839). It remained in the Ward family until George Ward sold it to Susan Perrin in 1861. She eventually sold it to Louisa Ward Heitmann, George Ward’s sister, in 1868. Her daughter, Henrietta Heitmann, inherited the house in 1897. She was engaged in various business ventures and also added the north wing to the house and used it as a dame school. The house passed out of the Ward-Heitmann family when Charles Elliott Pickett purchased it in 1910. In the twentieth century the house had a number of owners and for a time housed an antiques store and later a tearoom. The Milano family owned the house from 1949 to the early 1990s and left it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which sold it to the Ward-Heitmann House Museum Foundation in 1995. The house was then restored to become a museum.

West Street School (1760)

The West Street School is a one-room schoolhouse at 1432 West Street in Southington. It was erected about 1760 and was in continuous operation, serving the northwest quarter of town, until 1946. It has been little changed over the years, retaining its eighteenth-century exterior features and a nineteenth-century interior, which includes a pot-bellied wood stove. The site also has the school’s associated outbuildings: a woodshed and a privy. In 1933, the West Street School Alumni Association was formed. In 1947, a year after the school closed permanently, this group, by then called the West Street School and Community Association, obtained a 99-year lease on the building from the town. The West Street School is currently maintained by the Southington Historical Society. The school originally sat closer to the roadbed, but West Street was widened and lowered in front of the school in 1977, so that the building is now at least twelve feet above the road.

Union School, West Haven (1890)

West Haven’s Union School is a former school building at 174 Center Street. Built in 1889 to 1890, when West Haven was part of the town of Orange, it served as a grammar school and for thirty-five years as a high school. It replaced a series of earlier wooden school buildings. Union School is a brick structure with terra cotta and East Haven red-sandstone trim. It was designed by Leoni W. Robinson, a leading architect in New Haven. An addition to the building, identical in plan and detail, was built to the rear in 1914. The former school is now used for senior housing.