Taverns & Inns - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Daniel White Tavern (1722)

Daniel White’s Tavern, on Hutchinson Road in Andover, was built as a house in 1722 and was opened as a tavern in 1773 by Daniel White, who was a Coventry selectman and an army captain during the Revolutionary War. Known as White’s Tavern at the Sign of the Black Horse, the house had two inner walls on the second floor which could be swung upwards to create an enlarged ballroom. The Tavern was a frequent stopping place for the comte de Rochambeau during the Revolutionary War. He stopped there in May 1781, on his way to and from his conference with Washington in Wethersfield. Later, in June of that year, when his army camped nearby in Bolton, on its way from Rhode Island to fight in the Battle of Yorktown (and again in November, when the army was returning), Rochambeau and several of his officers were guests at the Tavern. Rochambeau was there again in 1782, when he traveled to Newburgh, New York, for his final meeting with Washington.

The Griswold Inn (1776)

The Griswold Inn is the most famous landmark building in Essex. A sign at the Inn states that the Griswold House was built by Sala Griswold in 1776. It originally stood near the shipyard and was moved to its current location on Main Street to become part of the house constructed by Richard Hayden in 1801. Hayden’s house was the first three-story building in the lower Connecticut River Valley. Around the same time, Richard’s two brothers, John G. and Amasa Hayden, built houses on either side (they are now part of the Griswold Inn complex, the Amasa Hayden House being the Inn’s annex). Hayden sold his house to Ethan Bushnell in 1806, moving to a new brick house nearby. Ethan Bushnell turned his home into a tavern. A former schoolhouse on the property, built in 1738, was attached to the house, possibly to serve as a kitchen (it is now the taproom). The Tavern was inherited by Bushnell’s children in 1849 and passed through a variety of owners over the years, probably acquiring the name Griswold House during the period it was owned by Emory Morse of Wallingford in the 1870s and 1880s. The Griswold Inn continues in business today. See Below for more images. (more…)

Young’s Tavern (1776)

The current sign hanging next to Young’s Tavern Apartments in Willimantic explains that the tavern was established in 1776, was later known as Hebard’s Tavern and then as the Nautchaug House, Willimantic’s first hotel. The building also served as Willimantic’s first post office. The oldest parts of the brick building date to the mid-1700s (David Young petitioned for a tavern license in 1755). A Federal-style addition containing a ballroom was constructed by Guy Hebard in 1825. As described in the History of Windham County, Connecticut (1889), edited by Richard M. Bayles:

Guy Hebard had erected a brick house on the south side of the river and opened it for the entertainment of the public. […] Here all public gatherings, Fourth of July celebrations, trainings, dancing schools, balls and other carousals of festivity were held. The old Hebard tavern was known far and wide.

In the 1840s, Gordon Hebard was a Mason and his Lodge, Eastern Star #44, met twice in the Tavern before making a permanent move from Windham Center to the rapidly growing Willimantic. Later in the nineteenth century, the hotel was known as the Natchaug House and an item in the Willimantic Chronicle from Wednesday, August 16, 1882, indicated that “the old Natchaug house” was “marked for destruction,” because “D.E. Potter and E.S. Boss have purchased it and will erect on the site a tenement block.” Somehow the building survived this threat, but it did become an apartment building and and during the following century it severely deteriorated. Starting in 1984, the building was restored by author David Morse and continues today as an apartment building.

The Curtis Fairchild House (1741)

The former Spelman Hotel stands at the intersection of Main Street and Wallingford Road (formerly called Quarry Hill Road) in Durham. It was built as a house around 1740 (a sign on the house says 1741) by Curtis Fairchild, and sold just a few years later to John Jones. It was inherited by John Jones, Jr., who by 1767 was in serious debt and fled his creditors. The house ended up in the hands of Phineas Spelman, who turned it into an inn at the urging of the town. Spelman was reluctant to do so, because it was during the Revolutionary War and inflation had made currency almost worthless. He died in 1783 and his widow continued to operate the Spelnman Hotel, but it was finally closed by the town in 1793. The town was unwilling to license Elizabeth Spelman because there were now several taverns in Durham and town officials feared the effect on citizens’ morals. The house was owned in the nineteenth century by Daniel Bates and then by Parsons Coe, who altered it in the Greek Revival style, replacing the original gambrel roof with a gable roof. A front porch with six square columns was also added and the house was attached to an adjacent house. The Coe family owned the house until 1898 and the Harvey family from 1902 to 1954, when it became the property of Durham’s First Congregational Church. The house has recently been brought back to its eighteenth century appearance, again freestanding and with the removal of the porch and the addition of a restored gambrel roof.

The Simon Huntington, Jr. House (1690)

In 1688, Simon Huntington, Sr. granted an acre of land in Norwich to his son, Simon. According to Mary E. Perkins in Old Houses of the Antient Town of Norwich (1895),

This is then recorded as the home-lot of Simon Huntington, Jun., who was born in Saybrook, 1659, and married in 1683, Lydia, daughter of John Gager of Norwich. Like his father, Simon, 2nd, played an important part in the history of the town, serving in many civil offices, and in 1696, succeeding Simon, Sr., in the office of deacon of the church, which he held until his death in 1736. In 1704, he calls himself Simon Huntington (cooper.) In 1706, he was granted liberty to keep “a house of public entertainment.” His house, occupying a central position, was honored as the magazine for the defensive weapons of the town, and as late as 1720, a report, made to the town, states that it contained a half barrel of powder, 3 pounds of bullets, and 400 flints.

The Huntington Tavern remained in the family until 1782, when it is sold to Thomas Carey, who then sells it to Joseph Carew, a merchant. Again quoting from Perkins,

Capt. Joseph Carew perhaps tears down the old Huntington house, and builds the one now standing on the lot [in 1782-83], but it is also possible that instead of entirely destroying the old homestead, for which, being of Huntington blood, (though not a descendant of Simon, 2nd), he might have had some attachment, he may have altered, or added to the old framework, but this, of course, at this late day, we have no means of knowing. He also purchases the rest of the Huntington land, facing on the Green, except one small piece of one rod frontage, which is sold to Gardner Carpenter. The long, low, rambling house has the appearance of being of much older date than 1783. It was occupied by Capt. Joseph Carew until his death, and then by his daughter, Eunice, and son-in-law, Joseph Huntington. […] It has been occupied until recently [1895] as the First Church parsonage.

While there was later enlargement, the earliest parts of the house date to around 1690 and it is considered to be one of Norwichtown‘s surviving seventeenth century houses.

Humphrey Pratt Tavern (1785)

Built around 1785, the Humphrey Pratt Tavern in Old Saybrook was a stage stop between New York and Boston and housed Saybrook’s first post office. There is also an attached ell containing a ballroom. The Marquis de Lafayette stayed at the Tavern in 1824. Humphrey Pratt, who also built a house in 1785 for Saybrook’s minister, Frederick William Hotchkiss, was a brother of Deacon Timothy Pratt, whose house stands nearby, and the Tavern remained in the family until 1943. The building also had an adjacent general store, built in 1790, which was later moved down the street and is now the James Pharmacy and Soda Fountain.

Marlborough Tavern (1740)

Built in 1740 at the intersection of two main roads in what would later become the town of Marlborough, the Marlborough Tavern has served, over the years, as a tavern, hotel and, in the 1790s, a post office. It is currently a restaurant. According to the Report of the Celebration of the Centennial of the Incorporation of the Town of Marlborough, August 23d and 25th 1903 (1904), by Mary Hall:

Marlborough was lifted from its isolated condition by the building of the Hartford and New London turnpike in 1800, the incorporation of the Hebron and Middle Haddam turnpike company in 1802, and of the Chatham and Marlborough company in 1809. The completion of these roads was of great advantage to the town. The barns of the Marlborough inn or tavern, then kept by Elisha Buell. furnished a place for change of horses and refreshment for travelers. Guests of national reputation were frequently entertained here. Among those known to have been entertained were Presidents James Monroe and Andrew Jackson.

The Marlborough Tavern was built by the Buell family and in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries was operated by Col. Elisha Buell, who also established a “gun manufactory and repair shop” and was “a fine workman in iron and steel,” creating the Buell Musket. His son, General Enos Buell, was a captain in the War of 1812 and succeeded his father as postmaster. Sheriffs transporting prisoners to Old Newgate Prison would stop at the Tavern, where their was a holding cell on the third floor. The Tavern also became the summer home of Mary Hall, compiler of the book quoted from above. Hall became Connecticut’s first female lawyer after the the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld her right to be an attorney in 1882. Hall practiced law for more than four decades and also founded the Good Will Club of Hartford, a charity for boys.