Fuller Hall (185 North Main Street in Suffield) is a dormitory and admissions building at Suffield Academy. It was built in 1886 when the school was still known as the Connecticut Literary Institute (it was renamed the Suffield School in 1916 and Suffield Academy in 1937). Today it remains “the building at the heart of Suffield Academy.”
The house at 463 Halliday Avenue in Suffield was built in 1824 by George Fuller. It remained in the Fuller family (and is known as the John Fuller House) until the Town of Suffield bought the property in 1887 to serve as a Town Farm. The house became the town’s “poorhouse” or “alms house,” whose able-bodied residents were required to work at the adjacent farm. In 1886, a man known as “Old Cato” died in the house who had been a slave owned by Major John Davenport in Stamford in the years before the War of 1812. The house was sold back to private ownership at auction in 1952. (more…)
At 1095 South Grand Street in Suffield, near the East Granby town line, is a house built in 1781 by Hezekiah Lewis, a farmer. It is an early vernacular example of a house constructed of brick, which had not been a common material for Connecticut houses up to that point. Stylistically and structurally, the builder simply transferred the typical architecture of center-chimney wood houses to the new material. The house is not far from Windsor, which was the center of Connecticut brick making at the time. In 1794, Lewis married the widow Ruth Phelps. He died in 1805. Later in the nineteenth century, Lewis’ successors as owners of the farm began to focus more and more on growing broadleaf tobacco, which had come to dominate the agriculture of the area. Michael Zukowski, who arrived in Suffield in 1888, purchased the farm in 1905, becoming the first Polish landowner in town. His descendants continue to own the house.
The house at 52 South Main Street in Suffield was built c. 1840 for Dr. Asaph Bissell (1791-1850). Dr. Bissell was a member of Yale Medical School’s second graduating class (1815). A pair of leather saddlebags belonging to Dr. Bissell were donated to Yale’s Medical Historical Library in 1996 by the doctor’s great-great-grandson. Over the years, two other doctors have lived in the Bissell House.
The Moses Rowe House is located at 78 South Main Street in Suffield. It is a colonial house, built in 1767, that was later altered in the Greek Revival style, when the roof was also raised.
The house at 155 South Main Street in Suffield was built in 1795 by Joseph Howard, a skilled cabinetmaker and woodworker, for Timothy Phelps. The house is a fine example of the classical detailing of the the Federal style. Capt. Timothy Phelps served in the War of 1812 and was successful in the tannery business.
Ebenezer King built an elaborate Federal-style mansion, with two porticoed doorways, on North Main Street in Suffield in 1795. In 1811, he sold the house to William Gay, the son of Ebenezer Gay and a prominent lawyer and postmaster of Suffield, who ran the post office from his house. The house came to be known as the Gay Mansion and remained the possession of descendants of the Gay family until 1916. The house is now the official residence of the headmaster of Suffield Academy. (more…)