The rear section of the Curtiss-Fabrique-Judson House, at 657 Main Street North in Southbury, was built around 1762-1765. The impressive Federal-style front facade was added around 1810. The house is also known as the Stiles House.
An Episcopal Church in Southbury was established in 1843 at a meeting in the Bullet Hill School. Organized as the Church of the Resurrection, it was renamed the Church of the Epiphany in 1858. According to the History of New Haven County, Connecticut, Vol. II (1892), edited by J. L. Rockey, “The corner stone of the church, on the Shadrach Osborn lot, was laid November 5th, 1863, and the church was consecrated by Bishop Williams September 19th, 1867.” The main part of the building is stone, but the belfry is made of wood.
The United Church of Christ in Southbury was constructed in 1844 as the the meeting house of the First Ecclesiastical Society of Southbury. It was the Society’s third meeting house, as described in Vol. II of the 1892 History of New Haven County, Connecticut (edited by J. L. Rockey):
For more than half a century the settlers of Southbury worshipped in Woodbury church, and were tributary to the First Ecclesiastical Society of that town. In May, 1731, the Southbury parish was incorporated, and November 29th, 1732, this society voted to build a meeting house, and asked the assembly for a committee to locate a site. In May, 1733, the committee selected a final place, “setting the stake down on the hill between Lt. Andrew Hinman’s and the house that was Elnathan Strong’s.” This site was in the highway nearly in front of the present White Oak school house. The building was a plain frame, 35 by 45 feet, with 23 foot posts, and was not fully completed for 20 years.
[…] It was not many years before the first meeting house was too small to accommodate the congregation, and a new house was demanded. As in the first instance, the question of site proved troublesome, and it was several years before an agreement could be reached. Finally, after four years’ effort, a site was selected on Southbury street, south of the old site, on which was begun in 1764 one of the largest and finest meeting houses in this part of the state. It was twelve years before it was fully completed and was a noteworthy object many miles around, with its high spire, in which was a good bell and also a clock. These were purchased by general subscriptions of the citizens of the town, which were secured in December, 1773.
The meeting house stood at the head of the lane leading to the middle cemetery, which it fronted, and was used until the present house was occupied in 1844, when it was taken down and the material removed.
Attached to the rear of the church is the former Southbury Methodist Church building. Also in the Greek Revival style, it was built in 1847 and was moved and attached to the Congregational church in 1957.
When the first settlers came to Southbury from Stratford in 1673, they spent their first night under a white oak tree on Crook Horn Road, in what is now Settlers Park. That section of Southbury became known as White Oak and at 886 Main Street North is the old White Oak School House, built around 1840. More recently used as an antiques shop, the Greek Revival school house is part of a property, currently on the market, which includes the adjacent 1715 Croucher-Richmond House.
The Federal-style house at 194 North Main Street in Southbury once served as the Congregational Church‘s parsonage. It is believed to have been built by Harry Brown, a drover, in 1805. The house is nearly identical to the Timothy Hinman House, across the street at 185 North Main Street.
The house at 990 Main Street North in Southbury was built by Benjamin Hinman for his son Sherman in 1777. According to Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History, Vol. III (1903), by Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Sherman Hinman
married on February 9, 1777, his third cousin, Molly, youngest daughter of Captain Timothy and Emma (Preston) Hinman, of Southbury, and settled as a merchant and farmer in his native town. He built there an expensive brick house, and lived in dashing splendor for a few years, but was soon reduced to comparative poverty by his extravagance. His wife died on April 30, 1791, in her 34th year, and he married again shortly after. He died in Southbury on February 19, 1793, in his 41st year.
The house is known today as the Peter Parley House because Samuel Griswold Goodrich, who wrote many popular children’s books and textbooks under the name “Peter Parley,” lived in the house for a time, before his death in 1860. Goodrich was buried in Southbury. The house underwent extensive renovations in the 1890s and the History of New Haven County, Connecticut, Volume 2 (1892), edited by J. L. Rockey, states that it “was a pleasant country resort in 1890, kept by Egbert Warner.” In 1918, the house became a German Lutheran home for the aged (now the Lutheran Home of Southbury) and is connected to a modern complex of buildings.
Russian Village is a historic district, located between Route 6 and the Pomperaug River in Southbury. It was established in 1925 by a group of Russians who had fled to America after the Russian Revolution in 1917. Count Ilya Tolstoy, the son of Leo Tolstoy, discovered the area during a visit to his translator in Southbury. Siberian novelist George Grebenstchikoff then led the establishment of a community there, intended as a seasonal cultural center for Russian writers, artists, musicians and scientists. The village was named Churaevka, after a Siberian village mentioned in Grebenstchikoff‘s works. The community, established by, but not limited to, the creative intelligentsia, remained a predominantly Russian community into the 1980s. The main building in the Village is a chapel dedicated to St. Sergius. A stone building, it was designed by philosopher and painter Nicholas Roerich, financed by helicopter inventor Igor Sikorsky, and built in 1932 – 33 with labor volunteered by village residents, including Ivan Wassileff, a stone mason. The Chapel was also intended to be a memorial to the Cathedral of Our Savior in Moscow, which was destroyed by the Soviets in 1931 and has more recently been rebuilt. Since the Chapel itself is too small to contain a congregation, there is a small amphitheater with curved stone benches just outside, facing the Chapel. In 1931, the Chapel was deeded to the Roerich Museum in New York and later to the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
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