Eliza Brazell House (1875)

1 Inlay Street

Back in 2012, workers restoring the house at 1 Imlay Street in Hartford discovered Victorian-era architectural details that had long been hidden under vinyl siding. Thought to have possibly been built in the twentieth century and purposefully excluded from the Imlay and Laurel Streets Historic District, the house was revealed to have been erected in 1875 by Porter Whiton, a builder who also remodeled the Old State House to serve as Hartford’s City Hall. The home’s first resident was Mrs. Eliza Brazell, a widow who was born in Ireland in 1850. Restored by the Northside Institutions Neighborhood Alliance, the house has been returned to its original appearance and use as a single-family home.

Dr. J. W. Felty House (1910)

Dr. Felty House

Tomorrow is the 34th Annual Mark Twain Holiday House Tour, which features several houses in Hartford/West Hartford and the Hartford Club. One of the houses on the tour is located at 734 Prospect Avenue. A Queen Anne house, it was built in 1910 for Dr. J.W. Felty, a prominent surgeon. The Kansas City Journal of June 30, 1897 noted:

Dr. Felty Leaves Kansas.

Abilene, Kas., June 29. (Special ) Dr. J.W. Felty. vice president of the State Medical Society and of the Association of Santa Fe Surgeons, left today for Hartford, Conn., where he will locate. He has practiced in Abilene for thirteen years and is one of the best known physicians in the state

Dr. Felty‘s Hartford house was designed by Isaac Allen, Jr. and the original blueprints are now at the Connecticut Historical Society.

Mention of Dr. Felty’s work can be found in an article written by his colleague, Dr. Thomas N. Hepburn, a urologist who was the father of Katharine Hepburn, “Clinical Tests of Kidney Function” in the Yale Medical Journal of March 1912 (Vol. 18, No. 7):

Unilateral Kidney Disease. Under the heading of unilateral kidney diseases come the tubercular kidneys, the renal calculi, hydronephrosis, pyonephrosis, and pyelitis. In tests of this class of cases, ureteral catheterization, in order to compare the work of the two kidneys, is essential. It is necessary not only to make a diagnosis of the condition of the diseased kidney, but, more important still—and here is where any test that lends itself to quantitative estimation reigns supreme—it is necessary to know whether the other kidney is capable of functioning for both. A case of multiple calculi, sent me by Dr. Felty of Hartford, illustrates the point here made. From the appearance of the X-ray plate, made by Dr. Heublein, Dr. Felty was sure the kidney should be removed if possible. He wished to know how well the other kidney was functioning. With double ureteral catheterization, I found that the man excreted no phthalein from the diseased kidney, and the other kidney showed an output of 40 per cent. in one hour. Dr. Felty removed the diseased kidney, and the man made an uneventful recovery.

Dr. Felty had a second home in Florida. A notice in the Winter Park Post of September 2, 1920 states:

Dr. and Mrs. J. W. Felty with their son, Dr. A. R. Felty, of Hartford, Conn., spent three weeks here during August renovating their new home on Interlachen Avenue, purchased from Mrs, Rogers. The interior has been newly papered and other improvements added to the House and grounds. Plans are in the hands of an architect for a veranda and pergolas, which will be built when Dr. and Mrs. Felty come down in February. Dr. Felty is a distinguished surgeon of his home city and his son, who is a graduate of Yale and Johns Hopkins, is one of the house physicians in Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Felty’s daughter married a brother of Mr. Woolley, son-in-law to Mr. E. W. Brewer of this place. Dr. and Mrs. Felty greatly enjoyed their visit here and declared themselves delighted with their new property, which is in the choicest residential district of town.

As mentioned in the excerpt above, Dr. J. W. Felty’s son, Dr. A. R. Felty, was a doctor at Johns Hopkins. Felty’s syndrome, a medical condition, is named for him.

Curtis H. Veeder House (1928)

CHS

The house at 1 Elizabeth Street in Hartford’s West End was built in 1928 for Curtis H. Veeder and his family. Born in Alleghany, Pennsylvania, in 1862, Veeder was an engineer who got his first patent at age eighteen. He founded the Veeder Manufacturing Company in Hartford in 1895. The company’s first product was one of Veeder’s inventions, a bicycle cyclometer. Promoted with the slogan “It’s Nice to Know How Far You Go,” the devices measured the distance a bike has traveled by counting the number of rotations made by the wheels. The company later merged with the Root Company of Bristol, Connecticut, to form Veeder-Root, which continues to produce counting and computing devices today. Veeder died in 1943 and in 1950 his widow, Louise Stutz Veeder, sold the house to the Connecticut Historical Society. Founded in 1825, the society had been based for almost a century in the Wadsworth Atheneum. CHS constructed two large additions to the Veeder House, originally designed by William F. Brooks, to house its collections and museum exhibition space.

Warburton Community Church (1956)

Warburton Community Church

The original Warburton Chapel once stood at 61 Temple Street in Hartford, between Market and Front Streets. The Chapel began as the Union Sabbath School, started in 1851 as a mission of Hartford’s Center Church to residents of the city’s East Side. It occupied various quarters until Mary A. Warburton endowed a permanent home for the school and mission chapel on Temple Street in memory of her husband, John Warburton. The Warburton Chapel was dedicated on June 28, 1866 and rapid growth led to the construction of an addition in 1873. By 1916, the neighborhood around the Warburton Chapel was primarily Italian, and the building also served as the home of the First Italian Congregational Church. In 1948, Center Church decided to sell the Chapel and relocate its programs to the Center Church House on Gold Street. The Warburton Chapel was acquired by St. Anthony’s Catholic Parish, which converted it to serve as its new social center, named the Casa Andrea in memory of Rev. Andrew J. Kelly, who served as pastor of St. Anthony’s Church for 29 years. The chapel was demolished in 1960 to clear space for the building of Constitution Plaza.

The Charter Oak Community Church, an interracial interdenominational church, was established in 1942 and held its services in the community building of the Charter Oak Terrace public housing project. In 1954, the Hartford Housing Authority agreed to the sale of land at the corner of Brookfield Street and Charter Oak Avenue to the Trustees of Warburton Chapel for the construction of a building for the Charter Oak Church. Funds from the sale of the old Warburton Chapel were used to erect the new building, known as the Warburton Community Church. Designed by E.T Glasse, Jr., of Farmington, the new church at 420 Brookfield Street was dedicated on May 6, 1956. (more…)

Isaac Frisbie House (1870)

136-138 Collins St., Hartford

The house at 136-138 Collins Street in Hartford was built in 1870. An impressive mansard-roofed Second Empire-style house, it was once owned by Isaac Frisbie. He was superintendent of the Hartford Alms House, which once stood on a property to the rear of his house. The Alms House and adjacent Town Farm were abolished in the 1890s when Hartford’s town government was consolidated with its city government. Today the house on Collins Street is used as a halfway house for federal and state inmates who are transitioning back to freedom. The house once had a one-story veranda–traces of its roofline can be seen along the facade of the western half of the house.