Towns - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

The Benjamin Tallmadge House (1775)

The house originally erected by Thomas Sheldon around 1775, on North Street in Litchfield, is more commonly associated with Benjamin Tallmadge, who purchased it when he arrived in Litchfield in 1782. Tallmadge was an aide to George Washington during the Revolutionary War and served as the general’s intelligence deputy, as well as founding a notable spy ring in New York. Tallmadge married Mary Floyd, daughter of William Floyd, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In Litchfield, he became a merchant (in partnership with Oliver Wolcott, Jr. and Julius Deming) and was president of Phoenix Bank (later the First National Bank of Litchfield). Tallmadge altered his Georgian house with the addition of two columned porches on the north and south ends. He later completed a memoir of his life and may also have been the model for Col. Davenport in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s autobiographical novel Poganuc People.

Joseph W. Waters House (1865)

Joseph W. Waters was a New York-born industrialist who came to Cromwell and worked for the J & E Stevens Company. He married John Stevens‘ daughter Sarah and around 1865 he had an Italianate-style house built on Main Street in Cromwell. After Waters was killed in an accident, his widow married George Gillum of Portland. She lived in the residence until her death in 1896.

Seth Wetmore House (1746)

Located on a hill, at the intersection of Washington Street Extension and Camp Street, the Seth Wetmore House is Middletown’s best example of Georgian architecture. The house was built by the prominent citizen, Judge Seth Wetmore, in 1746, the same year he married Hannah Edwards, the sister of Jonathan Edwards. Wetmore called his home, which was intended to surpass all others in Middletown at the time in size and ornamentation, “Staddle Hill” (it was later known as “Oak Hill”). It featured an elaborate “broken scroll” Connecticut River Valley doorway and originally had a large gambrel roof. The Wetmore House therefore served as a model for the homes built afterwards by the leading citizens of the Connecticut River Valley region. The influential Wetmore family is said to have received visits at the house from a number of important people, including Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight, Aaron Burr and the Marquis de Lafayette. The house remained in the Wetmore family for over two centuries, but in recent years had fallen into disrepair. In 1986, the Wadsworth Atheneum acquired the parlor of the Wetmore House and had it installed in the museum, where it can be visited today. More recently, efforts were undertaken to to save the house from potential demolition. In 2007, the house was purchased and therefore saved for restoration.

The Glebe House (1750)

Built around 1750, the Glebe House in Woodbury gained its name because it became the home of an Anglican clergyman. A glebe is the farmland occupied by a rural clergyman as a benefice. In 1771, John Rutgers Marshall arrived in Woodbury as its first Episcopal priest and resided in the Glebe House. In 1783, a group of Episcopal clergy met in the house and chose Reverend Dr. Samuel Seabury as the first bishop in America. The house was later occupied by Gideon B. Botsford, a silversmith. By the 1920s, the house was in disrepair after passing through various owners. It was then saved from demolition through the efforts of the Seabury Society for the Preservation of the Glebe House. In 1923, the house was restored by William Henry Kent and opened to the public as a house museum in 1925. The next year, the eminent English gardener Gertrude Jekyll was commissioned to design a garden for the museum. It was never fully installed, but has since been restored according to the original plans. Visitors can now enjoy the Glebe House Museum and The Gertrude Jekyll Garden.

The Julius Deming House (1793)

Julius Deming was a prominent merchant whose house is on North Street in Litchfield. Erected from 1790 to 1793, the Deming house was designed and built by the important builder William Sprats, whose other work includes the house in Farmington called Oldgate, built around the same time as the Deming House. In the later nineteenth century, the house was used by Deming’s daughter Lucretia Deming as a summer home. She planted linden trees in front of the house, which became known as “The Lindens.” The house remained in the Deming family until 1910. There have been many Colonial Revival-style alterations made over the years, including the addition of a mansard roof with flared eaves in 1936. The house is still considered one of Connecticut’s best examples of the Federal style.

Stevens-Frisbie House (1854)

The Stevens-Frisbie House is an Italianate-style home built in 1853-1854 at the intersection of Main Street and New Lane in Cromwell. It was built by John Stevens, who came to Cromwell in the 1830s and, with his brother Elisha, founded the J & E Stevens Company, which manufactured hardware and toys, including mechanical banks. After John Stevens’s death, his widow sold the house to Russel Frisbie in 1892. Frisbie was superintendent of J & E Stevens and had lived in a neighboring house on Main Street since 1873. The house was passed down in the Frisbie family, until it was bequeathed, with all of its Victorian-era furnishings, to the Cromwell Historical Society in 1968. It now serves as the Society’s headquarters and is open to the public for tours as a historic house museum. The most significant alteration to the house has been the turn-of-the-century addition of a Colonial Revival-style front porch. (more…)

First Presbyterian Church, Hartford (1870)

The First Presbyterian Church of Hartford was formed in 1851 and had several homes until a chapel, in 1868, and then a sanctuary, in 1870, were built. Located on Capitol Avenue, near the Bushnell Memorial, the First Presbyterian Church was designed by Renwick & Sands (James Renwick, Jr. was architect of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and the Smithsonian Institution Building in Washington D.C.). It is a polychromatic stone building in the High Victorian Romanesque style.