H.R. & W. Bringhurst Drugstore and Doctor’s Office (1953)

Bringhurst Drugstore
Bringhurst Drugstore

Mystic Seaport recreates a drugstore of the period 1870-1885 in a building the museum erected in 1953. A small recreated doctor’s office adjoins the drugstore building. The store is named for the Binghurst family of pharmacists, which began with Joseph Bringhurst (1767-1834), who operated a drugstore in Wilmington, Delaware. The Bringhurst collection was given to Mystic Seaport by Smith, Kline & French Laboratories, which had acquired it after the store closed. The building also contains the Abram P. Karsh collection of pharmaceutical items from the Philadelphia area.

Boardman School, Mystic Seaport (1765)

Boardman School

The Boardman School at Mystic Seaport is a one room schoolhouse that was originally built in the town of Preston. It may date to as early as 1765 (or c. 1840) and was named for the Boardman family whose land was adjacent to the schoolhouse. When the section of Preston called Glasgo, where the school was located, became the separate town of Griswold in 1815, Boardman School became District Seven School (it was also known as Potter Hill School). It served as a school until 1949, when it was moved to Mystic Seaport.

(more…)

Gilbert Block (1907)

Gilbert Block, aka Main Block in Mystic

The large commercial building at 1-17 West Main Street in Mystic, which has contained numerous businesses over the years, was erected in 1907 by the brothers Mark and Osgood Gilbert. It housed the offices of the Gilbert Transportation Company, the brothers’ shipyard where they built and repaired schooners. (There is a photo that shows the building they previously occupied on the site before they built the current structure). The company went bankrupt in 1909. There was a fire in 1915 that gutted the building. It was started because of an over-heated flue in Green’s Bakery and spread to a theater that showed silent films. The building remained vacant until 1924, when the structure was rebuilt and renamed the Main Block. The building continues to be used for retail stores and apartments. There is a video about the building:

(more…)

John Edmondson House (1860)

Children’s Museum at Mystic Seaport

One of the many buildings on the grounds of Mystic Seaport is the Edmondson House, which now serves as the Children’s Museum. The house was built in the 1850s-1860 as a residence for John Edmondson (1803-1875), a textile worker and shipyard foreman. He married Catherine Greenman (1803-1882), a sister of the three Greenman brothers whose former shipyard is now the site of Mystic Seaport. After the Seaport acquired the house in 1942, the building became the Pugsley Clock Shop, an exhibition space for clocks, watches and navigational instruments. It is now the Children’s Museum, which had previously been located in a former work shop and tool shed dating to 1841.

John Gallup House (1837)

23 Gravel Street Mystic
23 Gravel Street Mystic

John Gallup, a carpenter-builder, may have erected the house he owned at 23 Gravel Street in Mystic. Built in 1837, the Greek revival-style house had alterations in the Italianate style in later years, but was restored to its original appearance in the 1970s. A house constructed by Gallup’s brother James, also a builder, is located nearby, at 32 Pearl Street.

(more…)

James Gallup House (1854)

The house at 32 Pearl Street, at the intersection with Clift Street in Mystic was built in 1854 in the Greek Revival style by James Gallup, a carpenter-builder. Describing the community of West Mystic around the year 1850, the book Historic Groton (1909) notes that “At the same period the Messrs. Gallup brothers, James, John and Benadam, carpenters, had a shop and lumber yard on the east side of Gravel St.”