St. Augustine Cathedral (1868)

The first Catholic church in Fairfield County was Saint James the Apostle Church, a brick building built on the corner of Arch Street and Washington Avenue in Bridgeport in 1843. The church eventually became too crowded and the cornerstone of a new church was laid in 1866. Built of stone from the abandoned Pequonnock quarry in Black Rock, the new church, renamed Saint Augustine’s, was dedicated on on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1868. The church became the cathedral of the Diocese of Bridgeport, when that diocese was founded in 1953. The cathedral went through a major renovation in 2003-2004.

Bridgeport City Hall (1916)

Bridgeport‘s current City Hall, at 45 Lyon Terrace, was built in 1914-1916 as Bridgeport Central High School. Designed by James Gamble Rogers, the Neoclassical structure replaced the previous High School building (built in 1882) on nearby Congress Street, which continued to serve as a High School annex until it burned down in 1948. A new Central High School opened in 1964 and the former school building became City Hall, which relocated from the old City Hall of 1854. (more…)

Mystic River National Bank (1931)

The Mystic River Bank was chartered in 1851 and became a national bank in 1864. The bank’s first building, a Greek Revival structure, was constructed on West Main Street in Mystic in 1851. It was replaced (on the same site) by a new granite structure, with two side wings, in 1931. The Groton Savings Bank, chartered in 1854, shared space with the Mystic River Bank until constructing its own building across the street in 1953. The Mystic River National Bank merged into the Hartford National Bank in 1950. The 1931 bank building is now a Bank of America branch.

Frank M. Butler House (1882)

Built in about 1882, the house at 37 Maple Street in Plainville represents the last phase of the nineteenth-century Italianate style. It was the home of Frank M. Butler and his wife, Julia E. Butler. Frank M. Butler was a partner and treasurer in the carriage-making firm, Condell, Martin & Butler Company (a pdf file of the New York Tribune of October 29, 1883 reports a fire the previous day at the company’s factory in Plainville and adds “The fire was of incendiary origin.”). In 1886, Butler sold the house and moved to Holyoke, Mass. Butler’s father was the half-brother of the famous Civil War general and politician, Benjamin F. Butler.

Phoenix Insurance Company (1917)

The Phoenix Fire Insurance Company was founded in 1854. From 1873, the company was headquartered in a building on Pearl Street in Hartford designed by H.H. Richardson (and later torn down). In 1917, it moved to a newly completed building at 30 Trinity Street. The Georgian Revival building, designed by Morris & O’Connor, now houses the Connecticut Secretary of the State‘s office. This building is one of the sites featured in Tour 3 in my book, A Guide to Historic Hartford, Connecticut.

Hartford Electric Light Company (1914)

The Hartford Electric Light Company began operations in 1883, led by its first president, Austin Cornelius Dunham. He had earlier pioneered the use of electricity for industrial lighting in 1878 by installing a six-lamp arc-light system in a building of the Willimantic Linen Company. The Hartford Electric Light Company established an office on Pearl Street in Hartford, which was later replaced by the current building at 266 Pearl Street. According to the Hartford Courant of April 14, 1913:

The new building to be erected on Pearl Street by the Hartford Electric Light Company and covering the site of the old office of the company and the vacant land immediately west of it, and extending north from Pearl street to the present Pearl street substation of the company, will have a frontage of substantially 131 feet, and a depth of 100 feet. It will be five stories high, with a basement.

It is to be constructed as a fireproof building of brick and steel throughout. The entire front, together with the east and west sides to a depth of twenty-nine feet, will be constructed of limestone up to the level of the second story. The rest of the structure will be of a soft grey brick, harmonizing with the limestone of the first floor.

On July 27, 1914, the Courant announced that the new building was ready and the company would move into its new quarters that day. The Hartford Electric Light Co. (HELCO) sold the building in 1960 (but continued to rent space in it for a number of years). In more recent years, the building, which has had an extra floor added on the roof, has been converted into condominiums. (more…)