American Brass Company Headquarters (1913)

For much of its existence, the American Brass Company was the largest brass manufacturer in the country. The company was founded in 1893, with the consolidation of five existing brass mills in the Waterbury area. Purchased by the Anaconda Copper Company in 1922, it lost its individual name and identity in 1960. The American Brass Company’s Headquarters building in Waterbury, built in 1913, has a brass-clad entryway. The structure rounds the curved corner of Grand and Meadow Streets. Today, the building is part of the Waterbury Superior Court House complex, with the main entrance now located in a large addition, built in 1998.

Elisha Leavenworth House (1845)

Waterbury industrialist Elisha Leavenworth built a Greek Revival house facing the Green in 1845. He moved in with his new wife, Cynthia Fuller Leavenworth, who died in 1854 with her infant child. According to The Town and City of Waterbury, Vol. II (1896):

[Leavenworth] entered into partnership with his father in the drug business, under the firm name of F. Leavenworth & Son. In 1850 he took Nathan Dikeman, Jr., of Northampton, as a partner, and the firm became Leavenworth & Dikeman, and so remained until its dissolution in 1890. […] Soon after the partnership with Mr. Dikeman was formed Mr. Leavenworth ceased to take an active part in the business, and devoted himself to his other interests. On his father’s death, in 1840, he succeeded him as postmaster, and held the office until 1849. He held the same position again, from 1853 to 1861. He represented the town in the legislatures of 1863, 1864, 1867, 1868. In 1875 he was elected judge of probate, and again in 1877 and 1878. He was for many years the acknowledged manager of the Democratic party in the town. He was the largest contributor to the Industrial School building, having given $10,000 for this purpose. Leavenworth hall was named by the managers in recognition of the gift. He was the first president of the Dime Savings bank.

Elisha Leavenworth, who never remarried, left his house, upon his death in 1911, to the Waterbury Girl’s Club. That year, a Masonic Temple, now part of the Mattatuck Museum, was built on the site of the house, which was moved nearby to 35 Park Place. The Girls Club is now known as Girls Inc.

The Taylor-Wheeler House (1889)

The house at 47 Holmes Avenue in Waterbury was built in 1889 by Alfred F. Taylor, who ran a painting company (see advertisement, pdf, p.11). He and his family only occupied the house for a year before he sold it to John S. Wheeler, a retired painter. Taylor then moved to a similar Queen Anne house he had built next door, at 51 Holmes Avenue. According to the History of Waterbury and the Naugatuck Valley, Vol. III (1918), “the long established business of the A. F. Taylor Company”

was organized in 1880 and was incorporated in 1901 by A. F., Foster B. and Charles I. Taylor. The Taylors sold their interests about 1909 to George Reed, who had formerly been with the Scovill Manufacturing Company. He remained at the head of the business until 1908, when he sold out to W. D. Austin and C. W. Lyons, and in 1914 Mr. Austin purchased the interest of Mr. Lyons. The business was first located on Grand street and thence removed to No. 43 Center street, where the company occupies a building, which has a frontage of twenty-three feet and a depth of one hundred and ten feet. They handle a full line of wall paper, window shades and awnings and in addition do interior decorating in all its branches, taking large contracts for work of this character and employing fifty people in the busy season. The business has reached extensive proportions and has become one of the profitable industries of the city.

The Basilica of the Immaculate Conception (1928)

 

 

We conclude Waterbury Week with the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. The first Roman Catholic church in Waterbury was St. Peter’s Chapel, purchased in 1847 from Episcopalians, who were at the time moving to a larger building. The Chapel was moved to the site on East Main Street where St. Patrick’s Hall would later be built. In 1857, across the street from the Chapel, the first church in Waterbury specifically built to be a Catholic Church, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, was dedicated. In 1925 to 1928, a new Immaculate Conception Church was built on Waterbury Green, on the site where the William B. Merriman House once stood. Designed by the firm of McGinnis and Walsh, the church was modeled on the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, one of the four major Catholic basilicas. A Vatican decree in 2008 conferred on Immaculate Conception Church the status of a minor basilica.

Chase Brass & Copper Company Headquarters (1919)

Designed in 1916 by Cass Gilbert and constructed between 1917 and 1919, the former headquarters building of the Chase Brass & Copper Company is located on Grand Street in Waterbury, opposite the city hall, which was also designed by Gilbert. Both buildings were part of a plan of development for Waterbury by the Chase Company’s president, Henry S. Chase, who died in 1918, a year before his company’s office building was completed. He was succeeded as president by his brother, Frederick. The Chase brothers had rejected the use of brick for the new building, so that it would contrast with the colonial style of the nearby city hall. The company left Waterbury in the 1960s, selling the building to preservationists in 1963 for one dollar. In 1966, it was purchased by the city for use as offices and is now known as the Chase Municipal Building.