The Belden is a Colonial Revival/Neoclassical Revival apartment building at 1545-1555 Main Street in Hartford’s Clay/Arsenal neighborhood. designed by the firm of Bayley & Goodrich and built in 1898, it occupies a prominent position at the corner of Main and Belden Streets. A fire destroyed part of the north section of the building, but it was restored and partially rebuilt in 1983.
Thirman Milner, born in 1934, was elected to the State House of Representatives in 1978 and served as Hartford’s first black mayor (and the first popularly elected black mayor in New England) from 1981-1987. During that period, Milner lived in a 1927 brick Colonial Revival-style house (designed by Berenson & Moses) at 19 Colebrook Street.
The Greek Revival farmhouse at 319 Barbour Street in Hartford was built around 1875 by John Clark, with a front porch added around 1900. The rear ell was added in 1915, when the Women’s Aid Society opened a shelter for “friendless and erring women.” John C. Clark, Jr. opened a funeral home in the house in the 1950s, now called Clark, Bell & Bell. John C. Clark, Jr. was the first African-American to serve on the Hartford City Council (1955-1963). On the Council, he helped create the fair rent commission.
Now surrounded by houses of a much later date, the Greek Revival farmhouse at 249-251 Blue Hills Avenue in Hartford was built around 1850. There were once many dairy farms in the area, and this house’s owner, Charles Tuttle, operated one well into the twentieth century.
At 121 Holcomb Street, in the Blue Hills section of Hartford, is a striking example of the Stick Style. A Victorian Stick cottage built around 1875, it displays the style‘s distinctive trademarks of decorative half-timbering (called stickwork) and ornamental woodwork.
This week we’ll focus on buildings in the North End of Hartford. The Samuel F. Cadwell House, at 20 Belden Street in the Clay/Arsenal neighborhood, is one of the most impressive brick Victorian Gothic houses in Hartford; so impressive, in fact, that it is sometimes called the “Mark Twain House of the North End.” It was built in 1879 for Samuel Foote Cadwell, a dealer in seeds and agricultural supplies. The house was only sold out of the Cadwell family in 1967. Later abandoned, the Cadwell House and other nineteenth-century houses on Belden Street were recently rehabilitated.
The Melancthon W. Jacobus House is a 1908 Tudor Revival mansion designed by Brocklesby & Smith and located at 39 Woodland Street in Hartford. Melancthon W. Jacobus, Jr. (1855-1957) was dean of the Hartford Theological Seminary and, as Hosmer Professor of New Testament Exegesis, delivered his Inaugural Address, entitled “The Evolution of New Testament Criticism and the Consequent Outlook for To-day,” on October 5, 1892. His father, Melancthon W. Jacobus, Jr. (1816-1876), was a Presbyterian minister and writer and his son, Melancthon W. “Chick” Jacobus (1907-1984) was an English teacher and soccer coach at Kingswood-Oxford School and an author of books on Connecticut River Valley steamboats and Connecticut railroads. The family sold the house during the Great Depression to the Hartford College of Insurance. Today the house is the offices of the Connecticut State University System.
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