The Thomaston Railway Station, built in 1881, was part of the Naugatuck Railroad which began operations in September of 1849. The building served as a railway station until 1958, but then suffered from years of neglect and an arson fire in 1993. Since 1999, the station has been the home base of the Railroad Museum of New England, which now operates the Naugatuck Railroad, a scenic train ride between Waterville and Thomaston.
In 1880, the Laura Andrews Free Library and Benevolent Association was established in Thomaston with a gift from Seth E. Thomas, Jr. of New York in memory of his mother. A town library was established in 1898 and the Laura Andrews Free Library Association (as the Association had been renamed in 1882) loaned its library collection to the town. A building for the town library, designed by Griggs and Hunt, was constructed in 1900-1901 on land offered by Randall T. Andrews, a Thomas relative, worker at the Seth Thomas clock factory and an incorporator of the Laura Andrews Free Library Association. In 1906, Andrew Carnegie donated $1,700 to pay off the debt on the library building. In 1971, a new library building was constructed next to the old one. In the 1980s, the original Laura Andrews Library building was renovated as a children’s wing and connected to the 1971 structure.
Born in Wolcott in 1785, Seth Thomas first worked in the clock business under Eli Terry and later purchased Terry’s clock-making business in 1810. Thomas moved to Plymouth Hollow (later named Thomaston in his honor) in 1813 and founded the famous Seth Thomas Clock Company, which continued in business until the 1980s. In 1838, Seth Thomas purchased the house at 237 Main Street in Thomaston from Marvin Blakeslee. It had probably been built in about 1825 and is the only remaining of the five houses owned by the Thomas family on Main Street. In 1850, Thomas sold it to his daughter, Amanda Thomas Bradstreet, whose husband, Thomas Jefferson Bradstreet, was a descendant of the Puritan poet, Anne Bradstreet. The house remained in the family until the death of Miss Edith Bradstreet Mather in 2004. The following year, the Town of Thomaston bought the property from her surviving sister, Clara-Louise Mather Riggs. The Thomas-Bradstreet House, restored by the Thomaston Historical Commission, is now a house museum open to the public.
Displaying a date of 1876, the Morse Block is an office and commercial building on Main Street in Thomaston. The building seems to have replaced an earlier Morse Block (where clockmaker Seth Thomas had had a store) that was destroyed in a fire.
Trinity Episcopal Church, on Main Street in Thomaston, was built in two sections in 1871 and 1880. Representing the transition from the Gothic Revival to the Stick style (with board-and-batten siding, decorative gable bargeboards and a pyramidal steeple) it was built to the designs of Richard M. Upjohn, architect of the Connecticut State Capitol Building. Trinity had begun as a mission of the Episcopal Church in Plymouth (founded in 1740) and became an independent parish in 1869. Since 1996, the church has been St. Peter’s-Trinity Church, formed through a merger of St. Peter’s Church, Plymouth and and Trinity Parish, Thomaston.
The Hose and Hook and Ladder Truck Building in Thomaston, also known as the Thomaston Firehouse, was built on Main Street in 1882-1883. Using brick produced by the Seth Thomas family brickyard nearby, it was designed by architect Robert Wakeman Hill, who also made the plans for the Thomaston Town Hall and Opera House built next door in 1884. The firehouse was designed to accommodate two separate volunteer companies, Hook & Ladder Company No. 1 and Hose Company No. 2, and therefore had two separate entrances, two stairways and two social rooms. The Firehouse continued in use until 1979, when a new firehouse was built in town. Still owned by the town, the building’s interior was remodeled and it served as a teen center for a time.
The Thomaston Opera House was built in 1884 by the town of Thomaston as a multi-purpose building to serve as both town hall and theater. The stylistically eclectic structure was designed by architect Robert Hill. Granite for the building came from the Plymouth Granite Quarry in town and the bricks were made at the Seth Thomas Brick Factory. In the 1930s, the Opera House became a movie theater, but was little used in later years until eventually the building was closed for fire code violations in 1963. The Thomaston Opera House Commission worked to raise money to save the condemned landmark building from demolition. It was restored and rededicated in 1968. In recent years, the nonprofit group running the Opera House fell into debt and operations ceased in 2010. As of 2012, the Opera House will reopen under the management of the Landmark Community Theater Company.
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