Thomas B. Chapman House (1895)

The Post-Chapman House, a two-story Colonial Revival-style residence that the Hartford Courant described in 1895 as painted yellow with white trim and is still painted those colors today.

The house at 706 Prospect Avenue in Hartford was built in 1895 for businessman Thomas B. Chapman (1859-1904), a grandson of Episcopal Bishop Thomas Church Brownell. As the Hartford Courant reported on July 24, 1895: “The house was built from plans prepared by W. F. Becker, Edward O’Neil was the contractor, Olds & Whipple did the plumbing and Walter F. Blake did the decorating. The house cost about $9,000.” Chapman initially rented the house to his father-in-law, William H. Post (1833-1899), a prominent Hartford merchant who sold carpets, curtains, and wallpaper. Post passed away in 1899 and Chapman was living in the house at the time of his own death in 1904. His widow, Helen Post Chapman (1860-1941), continued to reside in the house into the 1920s. Her memoir, My Hartford in the Nineteenth Century, was published in 1928. To learn more about the house and about a dramatic explosion in 1919 that destroyed its kitchen, read my Substack article: https://oldhartford.substack.com/p/when-an-explosion-destroyed-a-hartford?r=4j8x6h&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Bartholomew Carini – Frank Lenti House (1909)

You can read much more about this house in my Substack piece “Frank Lenti and the Italians of Glastonbury.”

At 20 Lenti Terrace in Glastonbury is a substantial stone residence built into a hillside. The house‘s frame is said to have been put up by a dentist, who never completed the home because of the death of his wife. The house was completed in about 1909 by Bartholomew Carini, an immigrant from Northern Italy, who owned thousands of acres of land in town. He employed masonry construction, which is commonly found in vernacular Italian architecture. Another example of similar construction in Glastonbury is the ground level of the house on Main Street known as the “Glastonbury Villa.” Carini, a skilled hewer of oak and chestnut trees to make railroad ties, had arrived in about in Glastonbury in about 1890. He was soon able to purchase his own land and was soon joined by other Italian immigrants who began to grow fruit and establish orchards.

The house was later owned by Frank Lenti, another Italian immigrant, who first opened the famous Frank’s Restaurant in Hartford in 1933. After Lenti’s death in 1954, his wife eventually returned to Italy. For a number of years, the house was vacant and taxes on it went unpaid. The town was about to sell it in an auction in 1969, when Mrs. Lenti suddenly returned from Italy and arranged to sell it privately to pay the back taxes and the town’s cost in arranging the auction.

According to the Glastonbury’s Historic Resources Inventory page for the house, the date of 1909 is set in tesserae over its one chimney. The one-and-a-half house appears to have two-and-a-half stories when viewed from Chestnut Hill Road because it is built on a hill along a retaining wall with the basement exposed on the northeast side. The house’s front entrance is on that side, facing Lenti Terrace. The original floorplan has been altered, with a recessed side porch having been enclosed.

Calvary Episcopal Church, Stonington (1849)

Calvary Episcopal Church, which is a Gothic Revival-style stone building on Church Street in the Borough of Stonington, is not large, but is connected to a huge name in ecclesiastical architecture: Richard Upjohn, who also designed Trinity Church in Manhattan. His son, Richard M. Upjohn, was the architect of the Connecticut State Capitol Building in Hartford. The Calvary Episcopal parish was established in 1849 and the church was consecrated in 1849. The church faces west, with its side along Church Street, and directly across from it is a board-and-batten chapel, also designed by Upjohn, that was built as a Sunday School room in 1859. It was moved to its current location in 1892 and faces east. A three-sided enclosure is formed because a rectory, that is set back from the other two buildings and faces north, was erected where the chapel had stood.

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Canton Center General Store (1830)

The building at 180 Cherry Brook Road in Canton Center originally stood on the bank of Cherry Brook where it was built in 1830 by Norman Case as a woodworking shop. A flood in 1870 destroyed the stone dam on which this and other manufacturing operations in the vicinity depended. In 1874, Giles Sisson converted the carpenter shop’s upper floor into a social hall. The following year, brothers Austin and Myron Skinner of Middletown were persuaded by Rev. D. B. Hubbard of Canton Center’s Congregational Church to open a general store on the ground floor. The store has had many owners over the last century and a half. In 1886, while it was owned by George Lamphier, Sr., the store was moved east from Cherry Brook to its current location along Cherry Brook Road.

Capt. John Brown House (1776)

The house at 37 West Road in Canton was built in 1776 by Capt. John Brown III (1728-1776) to replace his earlier log cabin that stood west of the current house. As related in the 1860 book The Public Life of Capt. John Brown, by James Redpath:

John Brown, the third, at the outbreak of the revolutionary war, was chosen Captain of the West Simsbury (now Canton) trainband; and, in the spring of 1776, joined forces of the continental army at New York. His commission from Governor Trumbull is dated May 23, 1776. After a service of two months’ duration, he fell a victim to the prevailing epidemic of the camp, at the age of 48 years. He died in a barn, attended only by a faithful subordinate, a few miles north of New York City, where the continental army was at that time encamped. His body was buried on the Highlands, near the western bank of the East River.

Capt. Brown’s youngest son Abiel, who continued to live in the house until his death in 1856, wrote the book Genealogical History, with Short Sketches and Family Records, of the Early Settlers of West Simsbury, now Canton, Conn. (1856). Abiel’s brother Owen moved to Torrington and was the father of abolitionist John Brown. The younger John Brown later moved a monument to his grandfather, that once stood in the lot across the street from the house across from the house in Canton, to his farm in North Elba, New York. Brown was executed in 1859 and he was buried on his New York farm where his grave is marked by the same stone.

The house in Canton has a modern ell, shown on the right in the image above.

Former Noank Jail (1913)

In 1850 a small square building was erected to serve as a temporary lock-up near where the railway Depot is located today in village of Noank in Groton. In 1913 the building was sold and moved to its current lot at 87 Main Street in Noank. It was then used for various purposes over the years, including a barbershop, a speakeasy, and an insurance office, before becoming a private residence. Additions over time have included a rear kitchen, side garage, and a back porch.