Towns - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Nathaniel Hayward House (1775)

Around 1775, Amos Otis built a house for Capt. Dudley Wright, on the site of the old house Wright’s father, Joseph Wright in Colchester. The impressive new house also served as a store, a tavern and, on the second floor ballroom, as the meeting place of the Wooster Lodge of Masons. Capt. Wright’s daughter Lydia married Dr. John Watrous in 1783 and the couple moved into the house’s second floor. Wright lived with them until his death in 1808. In 1823, Dr. Frederick Morgan married the Watrous’s daughter, Caroline Watrous. When Dr. Watrous died in 1842, they lived in the house until 1848, when they sold the house to Nathanial Hayward. Hayward was an inventor who had conceived a process of vulcanization of rubber by treating it with sulphur and a patent for this was issued in 1837 to Hayward’s colleague, Charles Goodyear. [For more information, see Some Account of Nathaniel Hayward’s Experiments with India Rubber which resulted in discovering the Invaluable Compound of that article with Sulphur (1865)]. Hayward had founded the Hayward Rubber Company and built a factory in Colchester in 1847. In 1885, the factory closed, but was reoccupied by the Colchester Rubber Company in 1888, which operated until it was absorbed by the United States Rubber Trust in 1892.

The house was embellished by Hayward, who added a bay window. He also presented his front lawn to the town as a park. The Hayward family lived in the home into the twentieth century. The last descendants to occupy the house in the 1940s wanted it to be razed, but it was purchased and saved, although not kept up for many years. It has recently been a bed and breakfast called the Hayward House Inn, but is now a real estate office.

The Friend Collins House (1787)

Built in 1787, the home of Friend Collins and his wife, Philena Norton, is on State Street in Guilford. The house has a Greek Revival front portico, added in the 1840s. John Jackson bought the house in 1851 and operated a meat market in a side addition to the house. The addition was later replaced with a side porch.

Marlborough Tavern (1740)

Built in 1740 at the intersection of two main roads in what would later become the town of Marlborough, the Marlborough Tavern has served, over the years, as a tavern, hotel and, in the 1790s, a post office. It is currently a restaurant. According to the Report of the Celebration of the Centennial of the Incorporation of the Town of Marlborough, August 23d and 25th 1903 (1904), by Mary Hall:

Marlborough was lifted from its isolated condition by the building of the Hartford and New London turnpike in 1800, the incorporation of the Hebron and Middle Haddam turnpike company in 1802, and of the Chatham and Marlborough company in 1809. The completion of these roads was of great advantage to the town. The barns of the Marlborough inn or tavern, then kept by Elisha Buell. furnished a place for change of horses and refreshment for travelers. Guests of national reputation were frequently entertained here. Among those known to have been entertained were Presidents James Monroe and Andrew Jackson.

The Marlborough Tavern was built by the Buell family and in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries was operated by Col. Elisha Buell, who also established a “gun manufactory and repair shop” and was “a fine workman in iron and steel,” creating the Buell Musket. His son, General Enos Buell, was a captain in the War of 1812 and succeeded his father as postmaster. Sheriffs transporting prisoners to Old Newgate Prison would stop at the Tavern, where their was a holding cell on the third floor. The Tavern also became the summer home of Mary Hall, compiler of the book quoted from above. Hall became Connecticut’s first female lawyer after the the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld her right to be an attorney in 1882. Hall practiced law for more than four decades and also founded the Good Will Club of Hartford, a charity for boys.

Norwich Savings Society (1895)

The Norwich Savings Society, the second oldest savings bank in Connecticut, was founded in 1824. The Norwich Savings Society building, at 162-4 Main Street, in downtown Norwich, was built between 1893 and 1895, with an addition being constructed in the 1970s. The building was designed to curve around one side of an intersection, joining seamlessly with the buildings on either side (although the building on the Broadway side has since been demolished). The Chateauesque-style Norwich Savings Society building now houses a People’s United Bank.

St. Patrick’s Church, East Hampton (1897)

St. Patrick’s Church in East Hampton began as the Mission of East Hampton in 1857, with the first church building being constructed in 1869. The current church, located half a mile east of the first building, was dedicated in 1897 and a rectory was built in 1901. Originally served by St. Mary’s Church in Portland, St. Patrick Parish was set apart from Portland in 1900.

Finnish Hall (1924)

In Finland, as elsewhere in Scandinavia, Halloween traditions that we are familiar with in America (costumes, trick-or-treating, jack o’-lanterns) have only recently begun to become more popular. Instead, Finn’s celebrate All Saints’ Day, on November 1, as a quiet celebration of those who have passed away. Why am I writing about Finland this Halloween? Because today’s building is the Finnish Hall in Canterbury. It was built in 1924 by the Finnish American Education Association as a social center for the Finnish community in Canterbury, which had one of the largest Finnish communities in the state (about a quarter of the town’s population were Finnish farmers). The building, which has been enlarged over the years, was renamed Sampo Hall when it was acquired in 1963 by a Finnish group known as the Sampo Club, named for the famous magical artifact from the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala. In 1987, the Finnish American Heritage Society was formed to acquire and operate the building and has since constructed a new Heritage Center, with a library and research archives.

Charles A. Converse House (1870)

The Col. Charles A. Converse House on Washington Street in Norwich is a striking Gothic Revival villa, deigned by Henry Austin of New Haven. Built around 1870, it was first owned by Col. Converse, who was one of the founders of Hopkins and Allen, a major gun manufacturing company in Norwich. In 1907, the Converse Art Gallery, an addition to the Slater Memorial Museum donated by Col. Converse, opened to the public. The Converse Homestead property also has a barn built around the same time as the house.