The two-story building (with a partially exposed basement) at 167 Boston Post Road in East Lyme was built in 1916 as the Flanders Elementary School. It was designed by architect James Sweeney of New London. It served as a school until a new Flanders Elementary School building, attached to the 1916 building, opened in 1964. The original school building then became the Central Office of the East Lyme Public Schools.
Niantic Cinemas at 279 Main Street in Niantic opened in 1950 as the single-screen Niantic Theatre. It was renamed after it was purchased by the Mitchell family in 1979 and was split into three screens (later 4 and, in 2003, 5 screens).
Built in 1868 along Long Island Sound in Niantic, the Morton House Hotel (215 Main Street) has been in continuous operation for over a century. Also known as the Old Morton House, the building contains 38 guest rooms and a restaurant. (more…)
The Baptist Church in Lyme was established in 1752 and the first meeting house was built in 1754 on Meetinghouse Hill. By the later eighteenth century, membership in the church had grown to point that Baptists outnumbered Congregationalists in the parish. Repairs were made to the meeting house in 1788 and in 1804 the building was plastered for the first time. Originally known as the Lyme Baptist Church, the name was changed around 1810 to the “First Baptist Church of Lyme” after a second Baptist Church was formed in town. In 1839, when the area containing the church became part of the new town of East Lyme, the church became the First Baptist Church of East Lyme. A separate Baptist church in Niantic (part of East Lyme) was formed in 1842. By that time, demographic changes had resulted in the meeting house no longer being as centrally located as it had once been. With new churches established in Niantic and Old Lyme, the First Baptist Church moved to the village of Flanders in East Lyme, completing enough of the new meeting house to make the transfer from Meetinghouse Hill to Flanders in the spring of 1843. The old meeting house was taken down and sold for lumber to help pay for construction of the new building. A parsonage was built next door in 1879. The church has been known as the Flanders Baptist and Community Church since 1929.
Built circa 1695-1700, the Samuel Smith House (pdf), at 82 Plants Dam Road in East Lyme, is notable as an example of a mostly unaltered early colonial-era house. Additions were made in 1735 (when the end-chimney structure became a center-chimney structure with an expansion on the west side and the house was re-framed with a gambrel roof) and 1812 (when a rear ell was added), after which the house remained essentially unaltered. The house still has an eighteenth-century shed (with a lean-to added in the twentieth century), the original well and a c. 1810 outhouse. Also known as the Hurlbut House, the Smith House was built on land owned by Nehemiah Smith, Jr. In 1698, Smith transferred the property to his son, Samuel, who was probably already living on the property (his father lived elsewhere). Recently acquired by the town of East Lyme, the house is being restored by the Friends of the Samuel Smith House to become a museum.
The Niantic Baptist Church was established in 1843 by residents of East Lyme’s southern village of Niantic who were weary of making the trip to the northern village of Flanders each Sunday to worship at the Baptist Church there. The Niantic Baptist Church of 1843 burned in 1866 and was replaced the following year by the current church. The original steeple (a double cupola) was blown down in the 1938 hurricane and replaced by the current single cupola tower. A Fellowship Hall was added in 1959 and another fire in 1964 led to the restoration of the building, which is located at 443 Main Street.
The house at 105 East Pattagansett Road in East Lyme was built circa 1760 by Joseph Smith, the son of Samuel Smith, whose 1695 house survives on Plants Dam Road. During the Revolutionary War, the house was rented to Elisha Beckwith, a notorious Tory, who was known to pass intelligence to the British force based at Sag Harbor, Long Island. The British would cross Long Island Sound at night, hide their boat at Crescent Beach and leave the next day with supplies provided by Beckwith. Beckwith was likely a valuable source of information for Benedict Arnold during the raid on New London on September 6, 1781. The Connecticut Gazette of November 30, 1781 (also quoted in John Warner Barber’s Connecticut Historical Collections under the date December 6, 1781) reported that
Last Friday a guard under the command of Ensign Andrew Griswold, stationed at Lyme, discovered a whale boat in a fresh pond near Black Point; and suspecting it came from Long Island, they set a guard of five men over the boat; and the night after four others of the guard with Ensign Griswold, went towards the house of the noted Elisha Beckwith; one of the party named Noah Lester, advanced faster than the rest, and was challenged by Beckwith’s wife, who was near the house; this alarmed ten men who were in the house, well armed, and they immediately seized upon and made prisoner of Lester, and carried him into the house. Soon after the other four of the guard came to the house, (not knowing Lester was a prisoner,) and went directly in; where they discovered the ten persons in arms: a scuffle immediately ensued between them; and after some lime the guard secured six of the party, among whom was Elisha Beckwith; the other four made their escape into the woods, but they all except one were taken the next day. They came in the above boat from Long Island, and were under the command of Thomas Smith, formerly of Middletown, who had a Captain’s commission under the British King. Elisha Beckwith went off with the enemy the 6th Sept. last, when they made their descent on this place. The above culprits are secured in Norwich gaol.
After spending time in the Hartford Jail, Beckwith eventually reunited with his family in Nova Scotia in 1782.
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