Elm Tree Inn (1655)

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The earliest section of what later on became the Elm Tree Inn in Farmington was the 1655 house of William Lewis, an original settler of the town. His son built a new and larger structure, around the old house, and the enlarged building became a tavern and inn. By the mid-eighteenth century, it was operated by Phineas Lewis. Washington dined at the tavern, while on his way to Hartford, in 1780 and again, while on his way to Wethersfield, in 1781. The French general Rochambeau may have also stayed there with his officers when he was passing through Connecticut with his army in 1781. The facade of the building was later updated in the Georgian style and the tavern came to be known as the Elm Tree Inn, after the elm trees on the property, planted in the 1760s. The Inn continued to be popular into the twentieth century as it was a stop on the trolley line to Hartford. Mark Twain frequently dined there while he lived in Hartford, as did the cast and crew filming Way Down East with Lillian Gish in 1919. The exterior of the Inn was once surrounded by a long verandah, which has since been removed. The building is now subdivided into condominiums.

The Brainerd Store/Russell Inn (1813)

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On the east bank of the Connecticut River at Haddam Neck is an impressive building built in 1813 by Dudley Brainerd as a house and store. It was a good location: facing Haddam Neck’s main dock at Rock Landing and with a shipyard to the south, sailing vessels would often stop. According to the chapter on Haddam Neck by Henry M. Selden, in the 1884 History of Middlesex County,

The pioneer merchant was Robert Clark. The next was Dudley Brainerd, who built the house now occupied by Captain Charles S. Russell, in the basement of which he had his store. This store was next managed by Selden Huntington one year, succeeded by Elias Selden and Colonel Theodore H. Arnold, under the firm name of Selden & Arnold, then by a Mr. L’Hommedieu, and in rotation by Lavater R. Selden, James S. Selden, Lucius E. Goff, Captain Charles S. Russell, Albert S. Russell, George E. Russell & Co, and Joseph Griffin.

Charles S. Russell bought the building in 1846 and by the 1870s he had converted it to become an inn, serving the steamboat passengers traveling between Hartford and New York City. It was at this time the building was updated, with a Second Empire-style mansard roof and an impressive ornamented three-level front porch. A later addition onto the first story has a granite foundation featuring round windows resembling portholes.

The Welles-Chapman Tavern (1776)

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The Welles-Chapman Tavern, on Main Street in Glastonbury, was moved from the west to the east side of the street in 1974, when the Glastonbury bank expanded. In the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the tavern was the stop-over for coaches traveling between Hartford and New London. The tavern (which was also the town’s first post office) was built in 1776 by Joseph Welles. It was purchased by Azel Chapman in 1808. Today, it is owned by the Historical Society of Glastonbury, who have rented it out to a number of tenants, currently the Glastonbury Chamber of Commerce.

The Noah Clark Tavern (1791)

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Noah Clark, Sr. built his house in Haddam on Saybrook Road in 1791. In the seventeenth century, the property had been the location of Haddam’s first meetinghouse. The house served as a tavern in the nineteenth century, run by Noah Clark, Jr. and, after his death in 1834, by his widow, Charity and son, Austin S. Clark. The house was restored in 1997 and is now a private residence. There is also a nineteenth century barn which survives in good condition on the property. (more…)

The Abijah Beach Tavern (1814)

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Different sources indicate two different dates for the construction of the Abijah Beach Tavern in Cheshire: 1750 and 1814. The Federal style of the building is consistent with the latter date. The Beach Tavern, located just south of the Cheshire Green, was at the center of town life in the early nineteenth century: in addition to serving as an tavern, inn and store, it was also used for town meetings and court sessions before a town hall was built in 1867. The top floor of the Beach Tavern has a large ballroom. The Tavern is named for its first owner, Abijah Beach, who died in 1821. For a time it was known as the Benjamin Franklin Inn and became a private residence in 1852.

The Joseph Teel House (1789)

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The Joseph Teel House, on the Chelsea Parade Green in Norwich, is a three-story brick Federal-style mansion, with a hip roof, built in 1789-90. It was originally built to be a tavern and inn: At the Sign of General Washington. The house was later occupied by a boarding school, run by William Woodbridge, and was for many years the home of General William Williams. He donated 7 1/2 acres to the Norwich Free Academy and his wife, Harriet Peck Williams, founded the Peck Library (1859) at the Academy (in honor of her father, Capt. Bela Peck of the Continental Army) and the Williams School in New London. The house next served as the parsonage of the Park Congregational Church and then the Norwich Free Academy headmaster’s house. The house is now for sale.