Captain William Bull Tavern (1745)

Happy Thanksgiving!! The Captain William Bull Tavern in Litchfield was built around 1745 on a farm on the East Litchfield Road, part of the Hartford to Albany highway. It is not known who built the house, but Capt. Bull was the owner of the farm by the 1790s. He had served at the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in 1775. The house passed through various owners until Frederick Fuessenich of Torrington purchased it in 1923. By that time it had fallen into disrepair and was in danger of being dismantled. Fuessenich saved it and moved the building to a new site about two miles away, placing it across from where the old tollhouse on the Torrington Turnpike had once stood. Fuessenich, an avid collector of antiques, restored and furnished the house, which he renamed the Tollgate Hill Tavern. (The house was featured in an article in the September 1925 issue of Country Life magazine). He also brought other colonial buildings to his property to create a period ambiance, including a house believed to have been the first school house used in the town of Berlin. The antiques collection was dispersed during the Depression. In the 1930s, Fuessenich and his wife established an inn at the Tavern. The Inn has since continued under various owners and the kitchen was completely renovated in 2003.

Litchfield County Jail (1812)

The old Litchfield County Jail, at 7 North Street in Litchfield, built in 1812, is the oldest public building in town and one of the oldest penal facilities in the state. It also has the distinction, unique in the nation, of sharing for many years a wall with the adjacent bank. The jail had a cell block added in 1846 and a three-story wing with additional cell blocks in 1900. In 1992, the jail became a drug treatment center for 30 men serving prison sentences, but was shut down in 1993 and reopened the following year as McAuliffe Manor, a rehabilitation center for women. Since that center’s closing in 2010, the state has sought to sell the building. Among the possibilities being considered for the future of the facility are its conversion into municipal offices or its acquisition by the adjoining bank.

Beckwith Block, Litchfield (1896)

At 16 South Street in Litchfield is a commercial block, built by a member of the Beckwith family in 1896. It has served as the Litchfield Post Office since 1958. In the early 1980s, Litchfield citizens successfully fought to prevent the Post Office from moving to a large facility on the outskirts of town. $175,000 was raised to buy the building from its private owners by a partnership led by the Litchfield Preservation Trust. An additional $165,000 was then raised to remodel the building to comply with government mandates, and for architectural and legal fees. The remolded Post Office was rededicated in November, 1982.

Oliver Wolcott Library (1799)

The building at 160 South Street in Litchfield was built in 1799 as a house by Elijah Wadsworth. In 1814, it was purchased by Oliver Wolcott, Jr. The house was just across the street from the former home of his father, Oliver Wolcott, Sr., later occupied by his brother. Oliver, Sr. was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and Governor of Connecticut from 1796 to 1797. Oliver, Jr., who attended Yale and Tapping Reeve’s Litchfield Law School, served as Secretary of the Treasury under Washington and Adams, from 1795 to 1800, and as Governor of Connecticut, from 1817 to 1827. Wolcott added the two-story south wing to the Wadsworth House a few years after purchasing it. The house was given to the Litchfield Historical Society in 1963. The Society and the town library at that time shared the Noyes Memorial Building on the Green. The Society gave the Wolcott House to the library as its new home, in return for retaining the Noyes Building. The library hired Eliot Noyes and Associates of New Canaan to design a new modern wing at the rear of the Wolcott House, which began construction in 1965. The following year, the library moved into its new home and took the name Oliver Wolcott Library in honor of both Oliver Wolcott, Sr. and Oliver Wolcott, Jr.

Huntington-Andrews House (1800)

A house at 118 South Street in Litchfield was built for Rev. Dan Huntington, who served as a minister in town from 1798 to 1809. As related in Memoir and Letters of Frederic Dan Huntington (1906), by Arria S. Huntington.

In his “Family Memorial,” written as an octogenarian, Rev. Dan Huntington says that at this time he was much attracted by the current setting towards what was then called “the West,” the Connecticut reserve lands in Ohio. But the place of assistant minister at Litchfield, Rev. Mr. Champion having become disabled, was offered to him. He accepted, and was ordained to the work of the ministry in September, 1798. This “delightful village” was, as he himself describes it, “on a fruitful hill, richly endowed with schools, both professional and scientific, and their accomplished teachers; with its learned lawyers, and senators, and representatives, both in the National and State departments; and with a population enlightened and respectable. Litchfield was now in its glory. I came among them without patrimony; but with their assistance, in a handsome settlement, I soon found myself in a way to be comfortably at home among them, with a neat domicile of my own.”

Rev. Huntington later moved to Middletown, but in 1816 he gave up the ministry and moved his large family to his wife Elizabeth Phelps‘ homestead in Hadley, Massachusetts. His former Litchfield domicile was later burned (perhaps not completely) and rebuilt in 1862, as mentioned in Alice T. Bulkeley’s Historic Litchfield (1907):

On the site of the Andrews place, a female seminary was established by Miss Henrietta Jones, a descendant of Governor Jones of the New Haven colony. This lady was celebrated for her wit and the energy of her character. The house was burned and the Andrews house built on the site. Judge Charles B. Andrews, the owner of the house until his death, was Governor of the State, and later Chief Justice. He is the only citizen in the history of Connecticut who held the two highest offices in the gift of the State.

Moses Seymour, Jr. House (1817)

The Moses Seymour, Jr. House, at 24 South Street in Litchfield, is a Federal-style house with a distinctive trefoil window in the front gable. Moses Seymour, Jr. (1774-1826), a merchant and businessman, was the son of Maj. Moses Seymour and the brother of Ozias Seymour, whose house is at 34 South Street. The 1903 book, Chronicles of a Pioneer School from 1792 to 1833, Being the History of Miss Sarah Pierce and Her Litchfield School, contains a reminiscence by Dr. Josiah G. Beckwith, who writes:

In 1797 Mabel Strong, Lucy Case and a Miss Dwight, all of Addison, Vt., made a start for Litchfield, Ct., to attend Miss Pierce’s School — They made the journey to Bennington on horseback, and from thence the Rev. Mr. Dwight drove them to Litchfield — the latter part of the journey was made in a wagon. Mabel Strong made her home during the years of her stay in Litchfield, with Mrs Brace, a sister of Miss Pierce, and the mother of John P. Brace — her wardrobe was made up after her arrival. The Brace house stood on the site now occupied by the Congregational parsonage. […] My grandfather Moses Seymour Jr. drove from Litchfield, with a sleigh and pair of horses in Feb. 1800, to bring home Mabel Strong as his bride; […] Moses Seymour Jr., and his bride commenced housekeeping in what was then known as the Skinner house, now occupied by the Bissells next the United States Hotel; they afterwards removed to the Marsh house on the corner, where the Library building stands, where they remained until 1817, when the house which I now occupy, was completed for my grandfather and they took possession of it in that year. Moses Seymour Jr. was for many years high Sheriff of the County. […] [Their daughter] Jane Seymour married Dr. Josiah G. Beckwith who was for forty years in active practice in this town, she lived, until her death, which occurred in 1868, in her father’s homestead.