Blockhouse at Fort Trumbull (1796)

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The oldest surviving structure at Fort Trumbull in New London is a granite blockhouse, built in 1796. It was built after Congress authorized funds for the fortification of American seaports in 1794. The fortifications in New England were under the direction of a French engineer, Stephen Rochefontaine. Designed with tapering walls to resist exploding shells, the blockhouse (also known as a citadel) housed a powder magazine and soldiers’ living quarters. It was also intended to become its own mini-fort, a final stronghold if the main fort fell to an enemy. Of all the buildings constructed in America as part of the 1794 program, the blockhouse at Fort Trumbull is the only one still standing today.

Jordan Schoolhouse (1740)

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One of the historic structures on Jordan Green in Waterford is the 1740 Jordan Schoolhouse, the oldest surviving public building in Waterford. The earliest mention of a schoolhouse in Jordan actually dates to 1737. The present schoolhouse building was converted into a private home in the mid-nineteenth century for the widow Eliza Gallup and her three children. The building’s granite front steps came originally from the nineteenth-century West Neck Schoolhouse. The Jordan Schoolhouse was moved to Jordan Green in 1972 and is now a museum run by the Waterford Historical Society.

The Martin Wells House (1800)

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Not much is known about the construction of the house at 646 Wolcott Hill Road in Wethersfield. Most likely built by 1800, it may date to much earlier. The house is associated with the name Martin Wells, perhaps an ancestor or relative of Judge Martin Wells, who lived in the Webb House starting around 1820 and hosted Tocqueville when he visited the Connecticut State Prison in Wethersfield in 1831. The Wells House on Wolcott Hill Road at one time had a front porch attached, which was later removed.

Whale Oil Row (1835)

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Whale Oil Row is a row of four similar Greek Revival houses on Huntington Street in New London. They each have a portico with Ionic columns supporting a triangular Greek pediment with a semicircular window. The houses were built between 1835 and 1845 on speculation by Ezra Chappel. The original owners included two whaling ship owners, a merchant and a physician. Because the wealth of three of these owners derived from the whaling industry, the houses became known as “Whale Oil Row.”

See below for images of each of the four houses. (more…)

The John C. Anderson House (1882)

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Although by 1882 the Second Empire was no longer in fashion, the wealthy New Yorker John C. Anderson built an extravagant home in the style that year on Orange Street in New Haven. He only occupied the impressive mansion for a few years, complaining as he left of high taxes. Anderson was the son of the prominent New York tobacconist, John Anderson, who had died the year before his son built his own retirement home in New Haven. The elder John Anderson had an interesting career. In 1841, he was questioned in a sensational murder case, after Mary Rogers, known as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl,” who worked for Anderson in his tobacco shop, was found dead. The murder inspired the Edgar Allen Poe story, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.” In later life, Anderson would talk to spirits, including the ghosts of Mary Rogers and of his dead son. He had supported Garibaldi, who liberated Italy, and would speak to the Italian hero’s ghost (although Garibaldi was alive at the time!). Later, the John C. Anderson House became St. Mary’s Academy High School, run by the Dominican Sisters of St. Mary.