The Wheeler Library, 101 Main Street in North Stonington, is a private institution that serves as a public library for the Town of North Stonington. Funded with money donated by the Wheeler family, the Library was built in 1900 of Westerly granite. It was originally a school as well as a library, until the secondary school on the first floor moved out in the 1950s.
For my 50th post for the City of Nowalk, let’s look at the Norwalk Public Library building at the corner of Mott and Wall Streets (address: 1 Belden Avenue). The Norwalk Library Corporation was founded in 1879. This subscription library constantly struggled to find sufficient funds but its leaders finally persuaded the city to take it over as a public library in 1895. The library was originally located in rented rooms near Wall and Main Streets until funding was acquired from a Carnegie grant to erect a library building. A lot for the new building was donated by Hubert E. Bishop, the grandson of Norwalk manufacturer George G. Bishop. The Tudor-style library, designed by British architects W. and G. Audsley, opened in April 1903. The original entrance was on Belden Avenue, but when a major addition was constructed in 1978-1982 the entrance was moved to face Mott Avenue. The South Norwalk Library was founded as a completely separate entity, but was merged into the new city-wide system in 1975. (more…)
The old Gurley Tavern at 42 Chaplin Street in Chaplin is an impressively detailed Federal-style residence. It was built c. 1822, the year the Town of Chaplin was incorporated, as a stagecoach inn. An upstairs ballroom, which later housed a private school, has since been converted to a bedroom and bathroom. An addition connects the building to a barn at the rear. During the twentieth century, for fifty years the former tavern was the residence of quilt maker Ruth Snow Bowen and was known as The Quilt Shop. The Chaplin Post Office was located in the north parlor from 1950 to 1965. The building, later in rough condition, underwent a major restoration in 1999-2000. It began taking guests as the Old Gurley Tavern Country Inn, but was later subject to a foreclosure.
The Hebron Library Association was formed in 1889, taking over the 200 volumes of the Hebron Literary Society, formed the previous year. Originally requiring a yearly subscription, in 1899 the organization became a free library. Books were located at the home of the Association’s president, Dr. Cyrus H. Pendleton, until a library building was erected at 22 Main Street in Hebron in 1898-1899. Its name was changed to the Douglas Library in 1949, after Dr. Charles J. Douglas endowed a large sum of money in memory of his wife, Ida Porter Douglas. She had no only greatly assisted the library over the years, but had been the driving force organizing Hebron’s Bicentennial Celebration in 1908. An addition to the building was erected in 1957. The library was much expanded and thoroughly modernized in the late 1990s. The library became a town department in 2005.
Although it is now used as a diner, the building at 12 Tolland Turnpike in Willington, next to the old railroad depot, was built as a store. The first store in West Willington opened in 1837. The business was acquired by John Carpenter in 1874, when the current building was erected. In 1888, Charles Nichols bought it, moved the building to its current location and added a grain room. Hans Hansen acquired the business in 1902 and added a post office section in 1936. By the time of his death in 1939, Hansen’s Grain and Grocery Store was being run by his daughter, Ester (1913-2014), and her husband, Floyd W. Phelps. It was renovated in 1957 to become Phelps Market, which later moved to Phelps Crossing nearby.
In 1844, residents of the village of Higganum in the town of Haddam successfully petitioned to form their own ecclesiastical society, taking 135 members of the First Congregational Church of Haddam and that church’s minister, Rev. David Dudley Field. On July 23, 1845, the new congregation dedicated the Higganum Congregational Church at 23 Parsonage Road. In 1870, a rear addition to the church building was erected containing a chapel, conference room and kitchen. Another addition was constructed in 2012 to provide Christian Education classrooms, the church office and a remodeled Fellowship Hall.
Update: This building has been demolished: https://www.madisonhistory.org/generals-residence-final-report/
The house at 908 Boston Post Road in Madison, currently in a dilapidated condition, was recently subject to a foreclosure. The first person to build on the property was Ensign Nathaniel Dudley, c. 1729-1730, and the building was then expanded over time with several additions. Capt. Edward Griffin (1762-1802), who sailed schooners between between Boston and Haiti, acquired the house in 1799 from Lyman Munger. On one voyage, Capt. Griffin once threw his son Harry overboard after a quarrel. The cook threw over a chicken coop to keep Harry afloat and the young man was later rescued by a passing ship. Capt. Griffin was a slave owner who committed a heinous act. Hearing that revenue officers were coming to his house to assess his property, he entombed two of his slaves by walling them in the basement and leaving them to die.
The house had a number of owners after Capt. Griffin. Unoccupied from 1895 until 1909, it then became the summer home of Martha Hale and her husband, William Wright Harts (1866-1961). An 1889 graduate of West Point, Harts served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, eventually rising to the rank of Brigadier General. He oversaw a number of large construction projects, involving fortifications and river and harbor engineering. In 1901, he was sent to the Philippines, where he built roads and designed and constructed Fort McKinley (now Fort Bonifacio).
During World War I, Harts served in France and was appointed military governor of the Paris District and then Chief of Staff of the Army of Occupation in Germany. He was also a military aide to President Woodrow Wilson. Back in the United States, he supervised construction of the Lincoln Memorial and the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater. He lived in Madison full time after 1930. The general’s uniform is now in the collection of the Madison Historical Society. In the years since his death in 1961, the house, which came to be called the “General’s Residence,” has been a wedding dress shop, a restaurant, and a bakery.
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