Old Gungywamp (1670)

Gungywamp is an archaeological site in Groton, known for its stone chambers and double circle of stones. The builders of these structures and their function has yet to be definitively established. Old Gungywamp is a colonial saltbox house. It was built around 1670 near the Thames River in Groton, not far from the Gungywamp complex. It is also known as the Wood-Allyn House. In the 1920s, it was acquired by Elmer D. Keith, an antiquarian who was later the director of the WPA Federal Writer’s Project Census of Old Buildings in Connecticut and author of Some Notes on Early Connecticut Architecture (1938). In 1945, he moved Old Gungywamp from Groton to its current location at 892 Clintonville Road in Wallingford.

First Baptist Church of Wallingford (1870)

The Baptist church in Wallingford begun as a branch of the Waterford Baptist church in 1731 and was organized as the Third Baptist Church in Connecticut in 1735 and then the First Baptist Church of Wallingford in 1786. The church used a dwelling house in Meriden (then a part of Wallingford) as a house of worship starting in 1801. After Meriden became a separate town, the Wallingford members established their own church in Wallingford and built a meeting house in 1821. After the church burned down in 1869, the current church was constructed and dedicated in 1870. Located at 114 North Main Street, it is a brick building in the Romanesque Revival style.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Wallingford (1868)

Anglicans in Wallingford are thought to have first formally organized themselves in 1729, later establishing a Union Church with residents of North Haven in 1741. They erected a Church building near Pond Hill which was soon outgrown, as was a later building the parishioners moved to in the 1750s. A new church was built at the corner of North Main and Christian Streets in 1758-1762. At that time, with parishioners from other towns having established their own separate churches, the former Union Church was renamed St. Paul’s. In 1831, St. Paul’s acquired the land and meetinghouse of the Wells Society, a group of Congregationalists who joined with the Episcopalians. The old Episcopal church building of 1762 was moved, eventually being used as a residence. In 1846, a new Gothic-style church was built on the Wells land, but it was destroyed in a fire in 1867. It was replaced the following year by the current brownstone church, designed by George E. Harney of New York. It was built in the Gothic tradition of the English Ecclesiologists, who modeled their designs on English medieval parish churches.

William Wallace Block (1857)

The name William Wallace conjures up images of the movie Braveheart. Wallingford also had a William Wallace, and a building downtown is named for him. Not the Scottish patriot who fought Edward I of England, Wallingford’s Wallace was a real estate developer, possibly related to the Wallcaces who started the Wallace Silver Company. In the second half of the nineteenth century, North Main Street north of Center Street was being developed as a commercial center. The William Wallace Block, at 33 North Main Street, was one of the first of the new commercial buildings to be constructed there in 1857. The Italianate structure is impressively large for its early date. It has high stoops and a high first floor allowing basement shop windows, a feature typically found in more urban areas at the time. It remains the largest commercial structure in the Wallingford Center Historic District today.

Wallingford Railroad Station (1871)

Another historic Connecticut train station of the 1870s is the Wallingford Railroad Station, built in 1871 by the Hartford & New Haven Railroad on the Springfield Line. With its distinctive Mansard roof and decorative brackets, both elements of the Second Empire style, the Wallingford Station remains a prominent local landmark, located near where Hall and Quinnipiac Avenues intersect with Colony Street. Although the inside of the building has not been open as a station selling tickets since 1991, it remains an active Amtrak station. Owned by the town since 1964, the the station‘s interior was redesigned in the 1970s and the roof and exterior restored in the early 1990s. A number of businesses and organizations have been located in the station over the years. Most recently, it has housed the Wallingford Adult Education Program and the basement has been used by the New Haven Society of Model Engineers. Wallingford is also home to the Peters Rail Road Museum.