Windham - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

The Baker-Weir House (1750/1860)

The Baker-Weir House in Windham Center began as a colonial farmhouse, built in 1750. Two Italianate-style wings were added in 1860. The house was owned by the Baker family. In 1851, Anna Bartlett Dwight married Lt. Charles Taintor Baker and, after 1870, they resided in New York and spent their summers at the Baker House in Windham. The couple’s youngest daughter, Anna Dwight Baker, married the artist J. Alden Weir in 1883. The previous year, Weir had acquired a farm in Branchville, which became his primary residence. At the time of Anna Weir’s death in 1892, he had three young daughters to raise, so the next year, Weir married Anna’s sister, Ella Baker. Through his two marriages, Weir inherited the Baker farm and thereafter maintained three homes, one in New York, and his two country studios in Branchville, which is now the Weir Farm National Historic Site, and in Windham, which is still owned by the Weir family. J. Alden Weir died in 1919 and is buried in Windham Center Cemetery.

Young’s Tavern (1776)

The current sign hanging next to Young’s Tavern Apartments in Willimantic explains that the tavern was established in 1776, was later known as Hebard’s Tavern and then as the Nautchaug House, Willimantic’s first hotel. The building also served as Willimantic’s first post office. The oldest parts of the brick building date to the mid-1700s (David Young petitioned for a tavern license in 1755). A Federal-style addition containing a ballroom was constructed by Guy Hebard in 1825. As described in the History of Windham County, Connecticut (1889), edited by Richard M. Bayles:

Guy Hebard had erected a brick house on the south side of the river and opened it for the entertainment of the public. […] Here all public gatherings, Fourth of July celebrations, trainings, dancing schools, balls and other carousals of festivity were held. The old Hebard tavern was known far and wide.

In the 1840s, Gordon Hebard was a Mason and his Lodge, Eastern Star #44, met twice in the Tavern before making a permanent move from Windham Center to the rapidly growing Willimantic. Later in the nineteenth century, the hotel was known as the Natchaug House and an item in the Willimantic Chronicle from Wednesday, August 16, 1882, indicated that “the old Natchaug house” was “marked for destruction,” because “D.E. Potter and E.S. Boss have purchased it and will erect on the site a tenement block.” Somehow the building survived this threat, but it did become an apartment building and and during the following century it severely deteriorated. Starting in 1984, the building was restored by author David Morse and continues today as an apartment building.

Wilton Little House (1888)

The Wilton Little House, at 122 Windham Street in Willimantic, was built around 1896 [edit (7/28/2014: 1888 according to the Willimantic Victorian Neighborhood Association] and is a fine example of the Queen Anne style. Addendum (7/28/2014): Little was an employee of of Hillhouse & Taylor. In 1896, Little sold the house to George P. Phenix, the second Principal of the Willimantic State Normal School (serving 1893 to 1904), which is now Eastern Connecticut State University. The property was next sold in 1904 to Henry T. Burr, who served as the school’s third Principal, from 1904 to 1918. Burr Hall at eastern was named in his honor.

The William Jillson House (1826)

In 1826, Asa Jillson and his brother, Seth, from Rhode Island, arrived in the Borough of Willimantic in the Town of Windham, where they became industrial pioneers, setting up mills and building a stone house, built of gneiss granite quarried from the Willimantic River. Asa’s son, “Colonel” William Lawrence Jillson, had arrived with his father and eventually became the agent for his father and uncle’s textile manufacturing firm, the A. & S. Jillson Company. William L. Jillson worked with the machinist Ames Burr Palmer to invent the Jillson and Palmer cotton opener, which came to be used throughout the country. Jillson founded other textile factories and, when he died in 1861, control of his companies passed to his son, William Curtis Jillson, who became one of Willimantic’s most prominent citizens. By the 1970s, the stone Jillson House had fallen into disrepair. It was restored and became the home of the Windham Historical Society.

Eugene Boss House (1882)

Eugene Boss rose from being a bookkeeper for the Willimantic Linen Company (later the American Thread Company) to becoming the mill’s agent (or manager), a position he held from 1879 to 1916. He was, literally, boss at the mill. The company had a private rail network between its buildings and the train was pulled by an engine, the Helen B, named after Boss’ daughter. Boss’ house in Willimantic, on Windham Street, from which he could look down on the company’s mills, was built in the 1880s.

Rev. Edward A. George House (1896)

The 1896 home of Rev. Edward A. George, a pastor of Willimantic’s Congregational Church, at 90 Windham Street in Willimantic, displays elements of the Shingle Style, such as the distinctive curving in the front gable. (more…)

Amos Morris Hathaway House (1889)

The Amos Morris Hathaway House, at 191 Prospect Street in Willimantic, is a Queen Anne house built in 1889. Hathaway was an executive with the Willimantic Linen Company, which later became American Thread Company. In 1957, Hathaway’s surviving daughters, Kate and Marion, deeded the house to the city to become a children’s library: the Taylor-Hathaway Memorial Library. It was named in honor of Dr. Daniel Taylor, Kate’s late husband, and her brother Edgar, who had been an office manager at American Thread. Dr. Taylor was a dentist and expert on telescopes who practiced in New York City and Willimantic and who also owned a home in Noank. The house served as a library for ten years, when the children’s collection was moved to the new library on Main Street.