Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Glastonbury

Gideon Hale, Jr. House (1796)

Two brothers, Gideon Hale Jr., and Ebenezer Hale, built the house at 1381 Main Street in Glastonbury in 1796. The house was known as “Gideon’s Temptation” because Gideon Hale, Jr. is said to have built it in a unsuccessful attempt to get a local woman to marry him. Although it was built in the late seventeenth century, the house’s current appearance reflects alterations in the Colonial Revival style made later. The house was acquired by J.H. Hale in 1911 and moved from its original location near Hale’s house at 1420 Main Street. The Gideon Hale, Jr. House is now Gilmore Manor, an assisted living facility.

Moseley Talcott House (1851)

A granite panel on the Main Street facade of the house at 2190 Main Street in Glastonbury identifies it as the home of Moseley Talcott. A stone house built in 1851, it was much added to in the twentieth century.

Timothy Stevens, Jr. House (1743)

Happy Thanksgiving! The house at 1179 Main Street in Glastonbury is associated with Timothy Stevens, Jr. (1705-1746), who may have built it in 1743 on land that he had acquired from his father, Rev. Timothy Stevens. The house has also been given the later date of 1763. In the twentieth century the house was part of Red Hill Farm.

(more…)

Old Cider Mill (1870)

Happy Halloween!! In keeping with the Fall spirit, today’s building is the Old Cider Mill in Glastonbury. Recognized as the oldest continuously operating Cider Mill in the United States (starting in the early nineteenth century?), the current building was constructed as early as the 1870s.

Jehiel Goodrich House (1760)

The house at 620 Main Street, at the corner of Foote Road, in Glastonbury was built by Jehiel Goodrich (1741-1818) around 1760 (but traditionally dates to 1743) on land he had received from his father, William Goodrich (1697 or 1701-1787), in 1758. The ell was added later. A later owner of the house was Earl Hodge, an organizer of the Historical Society of Glastonbury.

Oswin Taylor House (1840)

The section of South Glastonbury just north of the Portland town line is a district called Taylortown because of the many members of the Taylor family who lived there. The 1869 atlas of Hartford County lists the house at 194 Main Street in Taylortown (built c. 1840) as the residence of O. Taylor. This was most likely Oswin Taylor (1809-1898), who once owned the Consolidated Feldspar Quarry on the west side of Main Street.

Harriet Welles Turner Burnham House (1879)

Harriet Welles (1856-1931) married Sturgis P. Turner in 1879. They occupied a house on Main Street (either built by them around 1879 or built earlier in 1830). After her husband’s death in 1916, Harriet Welles Turner later married John W. Burnham. Harriet Burnham, who died in 1931, willed her estate in trust for the benefit of her husband. When he died in 1941, her will provided $350,000 to the Town of Glastonbury for a public library to be constructed on the site of her former home on Main Street. The house was moved in 1951 by the R.F. Jones Company to its current address at 2247 Main Street. The new Welles-Turner Memorial Library was dedicated on October 5, 1952.