First Congregational Church of Litchfield (1829)

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Litchfield‘s first meeting house was built on the Green in 1723, the second in 1761 and the third in 1829. In 1873, a fourth church, in the High Victorian Gothic style, was built and the 1829 Federal-style structure, with its steeple removed as was typically done with deconsecrated churches, was moved around the corner. In the coming years it would serve as a community center and theater, known as Amory Hall or Colonial Hall. In the early twentieth century, tastes had shifted back from favoring the Gothic to an interest in the Colonial Revival. In 1929, the Gothic church was demolished and the 1828 church returned to its original site on Torrington Road and restored, complete with a new steeple (1929-30). Reconsecrated, it continues today as the First Congregational Church of Litchfield.

Ozias Lewis House (1806)

The Ozias Lewis House was built in 1806 on South Street in Litchfield. The entrance portico with Ionic columns is believed to have been removed from the Tapping Reeve House, further up South Street, in the nineteenth century. During the 1930s restoration of the Reeve House, a replica of the portico was added. Both Reeve (1783) and Lewis (1819) served as Justices of the Peace for Litchfield County.

The Dr. Daniel Sheldon House (1785)

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Dr. Daniel Sheldon, who was once described as having “long held a very high rank among physicians of this state,” began his career in Washington (CT) and later settled in Litchfield. His house in that town, built in 1785 on North Street, has a mansard roof and an uncommon design for eighteenth-century Connecticut houses. The house was lived in until 1889 by his daughter, Lucy Sheldon Beach, who had attended the Litchfield Female Academy and lived to age of 100.

The Benjamin Tallmadge House (1775)

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The house originally erected by Thomas Sheldon around 1775, on North Street in Litchfield, is more commonly associated with Benjamin Tallmadge, who purchased it when he arrived in Litchfield in 1782. Tallmadge was an aide to George Washington during the Revolutionary War and served as the general’s intelligence deputy, as well as founding a notable spy ring in New York. Tallmadge married Mary Floyd, daughter of William Floyd, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In Litchfield, he became a merchant (in partnership with Oliver Wolcott, Jr. and Julius Deming) and was president of Phoenix Bank (later the First National Bank of Litchfield). Tallmadge altered his Georgian house with the addition of two columned porches on the north and south ends. He later completed a memoir of his life and may also have been the model for Col. Davenport in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s autobiographical novel Poganuc People.

The Julius Deming House (1793)

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Julius Deming was a prominent merchant whose house is on North Street in Litchfield. Erected from 1790 to 1793, the Deming house was designed and built by the important builder William Sprats, whose other work includes the house in Farmington called Oldgate, built around the same time as the Deming House. In the later nineteenth century, the house was used by Deming’s daughter Lucretia Deming as a summer home. She planted linden trees in front of the house, which became known as “The Lindens.” The house remained in the Deming family until 1910. There have been many Colonial Revival-style alterations made over the years, including the addition of a mansard roof with flared eaves in 1936. The house is still considered one of Connecticut’s best examples of the Federal style.

Tapping Reeve House (1773) and Litchfield Law School (1782)

Tapping Reeve, a lawyer, and his wife, Sally Burr Reeve, settled in Litchfield in 1773. The next year, Reeve began teaching law to his wife’s brother, Aaron Burr, who was living with the couple. Starting with this single student, Reeve developed a curriculum which would be taught to almost 1,000 students over the following decades, as he expanded from his home to a one-room school house he had built next-door, in 1784. Because this was a time before the creation of formal law schools at the major Universities, this Litchfield Law School is regarded as being the oldest law school in the country. The school’s students included such notables as John C. Calhoun and Oliver Wolcott, Jr. In 1798, Reeve was joined by James Gould and the two operated the school together until 1820. Gould would continue to run it until 1833. The law school building was later moved from the site, but was eventually returned and restored in 1976. Today both the house and school are open as a museum run by the Litchfield Historical Society. (more…)