The house at 19 Chaplin Street in Chaplin was built in 1840 by Isaac Eaton (1801-1846). He married Maria Butler in 1824 and they had three sons: Horace, Isaac Lester, and Albert Dwight. Born the year the house was built, Albert Dwight Eaton died in 1851 at the age of eleven. His tombstone once stood in the home’s garden, but was removed when a family monument was erected in the Chaplin Center Cemetery.
For many years, Mansfield’s Old Town Hall (built in 1843) was used to store town records and hold town meetings. Business was conducted at office holders’ homes. Eventually the need to have a central place for town offices led to the construction of the Town Office Building, a WPA project completed in 1935 (the date on the cornerstone), next to the Town Hall. An addition was constructed in 1957 and town offices were moved to another larger building in the late 1970s. In 1980, the Mansfield Historical Society moved into the old Office Building.
Hartford’s Union Station is located between Union Place and Spruce Street, north of Asylum Street at the western end of the city’s downtown. The original Union Station was an Italianate structure built in 1849. It was replaced by a new station, built in 1887-1889. Hartford architect George Keller initially conceived the design, but the plans were drawn up by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge of Boston. A fire in February 1914 gutted the building‘s roof and interior. The structure was repaired and rebuilt, but instead of the original hipped roof with large gables on the Prospect Place Side, the building was raised to a full third story. A major restoration of Union Station was completed in 1987. Future alterations to the rail line and platforms will need to be made as part of the I-84 Hartford Project. (more…)
The house at 200 Summer Street in Bristol was built c. 1890. It was originally the home of Leverett G. Merrick, a grocer who owned two stores. His wife lived in the house after Merrick’s death in 1916. Marvin Edgerton, Treasurer and superintendent of Penfield Saw Works in Bristol, was a later resident. By the mid-1980s the building had been converted to use as an office, with a new block added to the front, replacing the original front porch.
The house at 283 Prospect Street in Willimantic was built c. 1875. It was originally the home of Origen A. Sessions (1842-1919), an undertaker (just across the street, at 284 Prospect Street, lived another undertaker, William Cummings). As related in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Tolland and Windham Counties, Connecticut (1903), Sessions worked from 1862 to 1872 for J. E. Cushman before
he began business for himself in the Atwood Block, where Puritan & Reade now are. From the start Mr. Sessions was engaged in the undertaking and furniture business, with which he combined frame making for all kinds of pictures. In addition to this line, he also conducted “dollar stores.” in both Willimantic and Stafford, his store at the latter place being the first of the kind and in these ventures he was associated with C. W. Raynes, under the firm name of O. A. Sessions & Company.
Mr. Sessions was the first occupant of the old Hamlin Block, where he maintained his store for several years. which was next established at No. 677 Main street, remaining at that point from the month of December, 1891, to April 1, 1902, when it was removed to the corner of North and Valley streets, in a building of which Mr. Sessions is half owner. In undertaking there has been a vast change since Mr. Sessions was first associated with it, and it is but strict truth to say that he has kept pace with every advance in his art. It is a work for which his fine taste, delicacy of thought and expression toward his patrons, and a tender respect and sympathy for their feelings, give him a peculiar fitness. His store is fully furnished with all the appliances for the successful management of his business, including a fine and new rubber-tired hearse, which for beauty of design and artistic workmanship cannot be surpassed anywhere. Mr. Sessions devotes special attention to embalming, and uses a preparation that preserves the features in a life-like expression. His services are in demand throughout Eastern Connecticut, and to every case he still gives his personal attention, after a business career of over thirty-eight years.
St. Rose Catholic Parish, located in the Burnside section of East Hartford, was established in 1920. The parish‘s first church was a Quonset hut on Church Street, situated between the current church (33 Church Street) and Burnside Avenue. A new church was dedicated on June 22, 1924. [see also Mike Sheridan, “St. Rose’s Church Parishioners Pitch In To Renovate Building,” Hartford Courant, July 28, 1974]. (more…)
Memorial House is a large Georgian Revival dormitory building on the campus of Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford. Completed in 1921, it was dedicated to the memory of the fifteen Choate boys who had fallen in the First World War. In 2014, new stair railings and new balustrade and columns for the entry portico were added in front of the building to mark the centennial of the war’s beginning. Memorial Hall was designed by Francis Waterman to be a mirror image of Hill House, which he had designed for the Choate campus a decade earlier.
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