Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Glastonbury

The Dr. Lee J. Whittles House (1850)

A Cardinal House is a bed and breakfast located on Main Street in Glastonbury. Their website describes it as an 1850 house in the Georgian Revival style. That would make it a very early example of this style of building.

Edit (5/27/08): I have more recently learned that this house was extensively remodeled in 1897 and again in 1936, when it was the home of Dr. Lee J. Whittles. He studied Glastonbury’s old houses for decades and was part of the committee responsible for the Welles-Shipman-Ward House from being razed.

The John Caswell House (1783)

Located on Tryon Street in Glastonbury, at the end of Ferry Lane, the John Caswell House was built in 1783. Caswell was a clock and furniture-maker. The house was occupied by the same family, the Caswells and their Miller descendants, for over a century and a half, including Harriet Caswell Miller, who taught at the District 10 School next door at the turn-of -the-last-century.

Hale-Goodrich House (1876)

The 1876, Second Empire-style Frances E. Hale House, on Main Street in Glastonbury, looks like an appropriate house to post on Halloween!

This is also an appropriate day to announce the start of a new companion blog to Historic Buildings of Connecticut called Historic Gravestones of Souther New England! It will not be updated quite as frequently as this blog is, but please check it out!

Also, this blog is now six months old! To celebrate, I have added a poll. Please vote! (Poll now closed).

Edit (5/27/08): The house replaced the earlier home of Timothy Hale, later occupied by his son, Atwater Hale. After Atwater’s death in 1874, his widow Frances had this house built and invited her daughter, Deborah and son-in-law, John Q. Goodrich, to move in and help run the family tobacco farm.

Timothy Stevens House (1693)

Built around 1693, on Main Street, by the town of Glastonbury for its first minister, Reverend Timothy Stevens. Building a Meeting House and having a resident minister were requirements the new town had to meet to seperate from Wethersfield. Given a choice between a 20-foot house, or one twice the length–provided he supplied the nails, glass and iron–the minister opted for the larger size. The house is also notable for having an early brick foundation. Like other seventeenth century houses in Glastonbury, the house faces south.

The William Wickham House (1685)

Located on Main Street in Glastonbury, the house built by William Wickham was constructed in two sections. The first section, built in 1685, with its front facade facing south, was originally a saltbox. After the marriage of William Wickham‘s son John, in 1716, an addition was completed the following year, facing Main Street, which had been laid out in 1698. The new addition featured a gambrel roof and the roof on the south facade was adjusted to match it.

Thomas Hale House (1760)

Thomas Hale was one of the petitioners who sought a separation of Glastonbury from Wethersfield in 1690. Licensed as a tavern keeper, Hale built his house, on Main Street in Glastonbury, in 1714 [recently amended to the 1760s at the earliest: see comment below]. One of the oldest houses in town, it is currently owned by the neighboring First Church of Christ, Congregational.

The Hale-Rankin House (1789)

Earlier believed to have been built by Andrew Hale around 1754, with alterations made later in the Federal-style, the Hale-Rankin House is now thought to have been built in the Federal style in 1789. Located on Main Street in Glastonbury, it was built by Benjamin Hale and was later owned by the Reverend Samuel Rankin in the nineteenth century. Rankin was an abolitionist who told stories of people fleeing slavery by crossing the ice on the Ohio River. These stories influenced Harriet Beecher Stowe‘s story of Eliza crossing the ice in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The house’s doorway is featured in Plate XXIV of Frederick Kelly’s Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut. Post Edited 5/27/08.