John Northrop House (1871)

The house at 89 Main Street in Ivoryton was built in 1870-1871 by Samuel Merritt Comstock for John Northrop (1836-1897), to whom he sold it in 1874. Comstock was head of the ivory cutting business Comstock, Cheney & Co. Northrop was the company’s treasurer and in 1872 he married Comstock’s daughter Elizabeth (1840-1925). After her death, the house passed to Lucia Tully Chapman of New London, who sold it in 1929 to Laura Wright Wetmore, daughter of Northam Wight of the Connecticut Valley Manufacturing Company of Centerbrook. She was the wife of Edward Van Dyke Wetmore of the Essex Paint and Marine Company. The house was originally a Stick Style Victorian residence, but after 1930 it was altered to a colonial revival appearance.

Chauncey Spencer House (1860)

Chauncey Spencer was a builder who erected a number of tenement houses in the village of Ivoryton in Essex. In 1856 he acquired the land at 3 Main Street in Ivoryton from Dan Parker, whose daughter Temperance he had married in 1853. He built the house on the property by 1860. After the Temperance died in 1892, Chauncey married her sister, Cornelia. The home remained in the Spencer family until 1963. (more…)

Ivoryton Library (1889)

In the later nineteenth century, the section of the Town of Essex, west of the village of Centerbrook would develop into the village of Ivoryton, centered on the manufacturing of ivory products by Comstock, Cheney & Company. In 1871, a decade before the name Ivoryton came to be used for the area, local residents formed the Centerbrook Circulating Library (now the Ivoryton Library Association). The library received vital support from members of the Comstock and Cheney families who ran the local factory. For many years the Library’s books were located at the home of Samuel Cheney, but as early as 1874, money began to be raised for a dedicated library building. Archibald W. Comstock and his sister Harriet donated land for the library in 1888. The Ivoryton Library, located at 106 Main Street, was dedicated in November 1889. For many years the new library was run by Bessie and Laura Comstock, unmarried granddaughters of the ivory-cutting factory’s founder, Samuel M. Comstock. Except for one early twentieth-century addition, the library appears much as it did when it first opened and continues as a private non-profit institution. It is the oldest library in the Town of Essex, preceding the Essex Library Association (also a private institution) at 33 West Avenue in Essex village. While many Connecticut towns once had private libraries that later become town operated public libraries, the two library associations in Essex remain private institutions.

All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Ivoryton (1905)

All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Ivoryton was founded in 1895 as St. Mary’s Church, which met in various places, including private homes, until a church was erected at 129 Main Street. Land for the church was given in 1904 to the Missionary Society of the Diocese of Connecticut by Isabell J. Doane, daughter of Marsena Whiting Comstock of Comstock, Cheney & Company. The cornerstone was laid in 1905 and the church was consecrated on January 7, 1906. A parish hall was added to the church in 1948 and the neighboring house was acquired as a vicarage in 1959. The house was built in 1886 by William Griffith and his wife Lillian, another daughter of Marsena Whiting Comstock.

Ivoryton Congregational Church (1888)

In the mid-nineteenth century, Ivoryton in Essex developed as a factory village around Comstock, Cheney & Company, manufacturers of products made from ivory. The heirs of company founder Samuel Merritt Comstock, under the leadership of Harriet Comstick, erected the Comstock Memorial Chapel in 1887-1888. As a mission of the Centerbrook Congregational Church, the Chapel allowed church members in Ivoryton to attend services closer to their homes. In 1898 the building became the property of the new Ivoryton Congregational Church, which had become a separate church from the one in Centerbrook. The Ivoryton Church, located at 57 Main Street, was enlarged in 1906. In 2017, the congregation, which now has approximately 25 active members, decided to put the church building on the market. It was acquired by a developer who plans to convert the building into condominiums. The final service in the church was held on October 1, 2017. The congregation now holds services at the Essex Congregational Church.

H. Wooster Webber House (1896)

Henry Wooster Webber (1866-1911) was a superintendent at Comstock, Cheney & Company in Ivotyton, a position his father, Lorenzo Dow Webber (1833-1905), had held for thirty years. H. Wooster Webber later also served on the board of directors of the company. He married Bessie Wright in 1893. Her father, Alfred Mortimer Wright, led the Connecticut Valley Manufacturing Company in Centerbrook. Webber’s house at 81 Main Street in Ivoryton was built in 1896, next to his father’s house. He later moved his family to Hartford because of the high reputation of the city’s public schools. Then he would reside during the week in Ivoryton and spend his weekends with his family in Hartford. The family also had a summer home in Westbrook. Webber died in 1911 and after his widow’s death in 1920, the house in Ivoryton was inhereted by their son L. D. Webber, who lost the house eighteen years later when he went bankrupt.