The Rockville Public Library began in 1893 with a $10,000 bequest from George Maxwell (1817-1891), President and Treasurer of the Hockanum Company woolen mills, and another $10,000 raised by the town of Vernon. The George Maxwell Memorial Library building, at 52 Union Street in Rockville, was opened in 1904. It was the first public building to be designed by architect Charles A. Platt. (more…)
The building at 26 Park Place in Rockville in Vernon, which now serves as a Senior Center, was originally dedicated in 1867 as a Methodist Episcopal Church. As related in William T. Cogswell’s History of Rockville (1872):
During the years from 1850 to 1860, the Methodist[s] built a comfortable meetinghouse in West street. This house took fire and burned on a Sabbath morning. The German Lutheran Church was a Baptist Church till after the Methodist Church burned. It was bought and occupied by the Methodist society up to the time of building the present Methodist Episcopal Church.
According to A Century of Vernon, Connecticut, 1808-1908, published in 1911:
The first service in the vestry of the new church was held on June 16, 1867. It was a love feast. The bell was raised to its place in the tower June 28, 1867. The vestry was inadequate to accommodate the congregations and the audience room of the church was dedicated on Tuesday, November 26, 1867, Bishop Simpson preaching the sermon.
The church was built in what was then a rapidly developing commercial area and the first floor originally contained the People’s Savings Bank. As further related in A Century of Vernon:
From the time that Messrs. White and Corbin took the front basement rooms of the church, long used as banks, it was the intention of those gentlemen that this property should revert to the trustees of the church. When Cyrus White died this had not been attended to and Lewis A. Corbin bought the banks. The subject was frequently mentioned by pastors and others, but it was not until the pastorate of Rev. W. J. Yates that it was definitely arranged. Then Mr. Corbin executed deeds which are duly recorded, conveying the banks to the trustees. He reserved the income during his life. Then a portion was reserved for a fund for contingencies, but at last all the income goes to the trustees. Certain annual contributions to benevolent interests are provided for and the balance may be used for the current expenses of the church.
The former church no longer has its original two steeples.
At 76 Prospect Street in Rockville (Vernon) is the 1893 mansion built for George Sykes. It was the first in a series of Queen Anne-style homes built for the owners of Rockville‘s textile mills. George Sykes came to America from Britain as a boy and from early on worked his way up in the textile industry. In 1866, at the age of 26, he came to Rockville to manage Hockanum Company mill, of which he was later president.
The Caleb Tefft House is a Greek Revival house at 60 Elm Street in Rockvile (Vernon). The house, built in 1848, is now used for offices.
As Rockville in Vernon developed as an urban center in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, known architects were sought to design prominent buildings. S.M. (or S.W.?) Lincoln of Hartford was the architect of the Citizens Block, a commercial building on the corner of Park Place and Elm Street, built in 1879 by John G. Bailey. In recent years, town officials have been seeking ways to revitalize the now dilapidated structure, ranging from sale to a developer to the use of federal funding. The building currently houses the Rockville Downtown Association.
The Crosley F. Fitton House, built around 1865, is at the corner of Elm and Prospect Streets in Rockville, Vernon. Crosley Fitton, born in England, was brought to the United States at the age of three. As described in Illustrated Popular Biography of Connecticut (1891), he
became a woolen manufacturer, as was his father before him. Twenty-six years ago he came to Rockville, and for twenty-four years he has been the agent of the Rock Manufacturing Company, being the oldest in continuous service of all who have held official connection with the manufacturing establishments of Rockville. As a woolen manufacturer he ranks among the most able in New England, and during his connection with the Rock Company it has enjoyed continued success and prosperity under his management. The mills have been enlarged, the most improved machinery obtained, the force increased, and woolen goods manufactured equal to any produced in the country. Mr. Fitton [d. 1891] was always a hard worker, and often the first man at the mill in the morning and the last to leave at night.
The War Memorial Tower on Fox Hill in Rockville, Vernon, was constructed between 1937 and 1939 as a memorial to Veterans of all wars from the town of Vernon. Before it was built, an earlier tower made of wood had stood on the site. Built by a Mr. Jeffrey of Meriden, it stood from 1878 until it was destroyed in a blizzard in 1880. Visitors were charged 15ยข to climb the tower and use the telescope at the top. The ruined building was not restored, but around 1889 the artist Charles Ethan Porter, Jeffrey’s brother-in-law, was using the surviving first floor as his studio. By 1923, the last remains of the structure had disappeared. The new Memorial Tower, built of stone, was designed by Walter B. Chambers of New York and was modeled after a 1500 year-old Romanesque tower near Poitiers, France. The WPA provided the labor and materials. The Tower is in Henry Park, named for E. Stevens Henry, a merchant and politician, who bequeathed Fox Hill and the surrounding area to the city of Rockville.
