Wallingford

Nehemiah Royce House (1672)

The oldest house in Wallingford is the Nehemiah Royce House on North Main Street. Nehemiah Royce (who died in 1706) and his first wife Hannah, were among the first settlers of Wallingford. Royce‘s saltbox house was built in 1672. The house is also known as the Washington Elm House because it used to be next to the Washington Elm: in 1775, when George Washington was on his way to take command of the Continental Army in Massachusetts, he stopped in Wallingford to purchase gunpowder and addressed the people of the town in front of the house near the Elm. The house was moved to its present location in 1924. For a time it was a museum and then was used as a residence by Choate Rosemary Hall, until donated to the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust in the 1990s.

Franklin and Harriet Johnson Mansion (1866)

The Franklin and Harriet Johnson Mansion, on South Main Street in Wallingford, was built in 1866. By the late twentieth century, it was being used for offices and had lost most of its nineteenth century Italianate decorative features. In 1999, the Johnson Mansion was donated to the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust to become the new home for the now closed Meriden American Silver Museum. Both Meriden and Wallingford were centers for silver manufacturing. The house is now being restored.

Judd Carriage House (1887)

The H.L. Judd Mansion was built on South Main Street in Wallingford in 1887, but the elaborate Victorian home was demolished in the 1930s. The mansion’s carriage house, however, survived and was moved to the parking lot at the rear of the Wallingford Town Hall property. According to Everett Gleason Hill’s A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918), the Judd Manufacturing Company was organized in New Haven in 1870 and:

“In 1877 the business was removed to Wallingford, where they erected a large plant and began the manufacture of stationers’ and druggists’ hardware. The principal stockholders were Morton Judd and his three sons, Albert D., Hubert L. and Edward M., Hubert L. acting as the company’s selling agent in New York. About 1870 a branch factory was established in Brooklyn, New York, for the manufacture of upholsterers’ hardware, which in 1884 was incorporated under the name of H. L. Judd & Company. In 1886 H. L. Judd & Company of Brooklyn bought the business and plant of the Judd Manufacturing Company of Wallingford and in 1897 discontinued the Brooklyn plant.”

The H.L. Judd company, which also had a curtain pole factory in Chattanooga, TN, produced various products, including mechanical banks and ink wells.

Giles Hall House (1760)

The Giles Hall House, built in 1760, is on South Elm Street in Wallingford. The house is near the site of the birthplace of Giles Hall‘s brother, Lyman Hall. After graduating from Yale, Lyman Hall became a physician in South Carolina and later settled in Georgia. He was a supporter of the Revolution and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence for the State of Georgia.

31 New Place Street, Wallingford (1856)

One of Connecticut’s few examples of an Octagon house (which was popularized by Orson Squire Fowler in the 1850s) is in the Yalesville section of Wallingford. The house, located at 31 New Place Street (and one of two on the street) was built around 1856. (Edits to this entry are in bold).