Downtown District Schoolhouse, Norwalk (1826)

One of the historic buildings located at Mill Hill Historic Park in Norwalk is the Downtown District Schoolhouse, a one-room school erected in 1826. The schoolhouse originally stood near what was then an intersection of Willow Street and East Avenue. East Norwalk was known as the “Down Town” district until the late nineteenth century. The building was used as a school until 1876 and was later used as a residence. The building was moved several times over the years, settling at Mill Hill when Interstate 95 was built through East Norwalk.

Dr. H. S. Dean House (1820)

The Greek Revival house at 1104 Main Street in South Coventry dates to circa 1820. By 1857 it was the property of the owners of the D & W Huntington silk mill, located along Mill Brook. It was later the home of Dr. Henry S. Dean (1823-1898). Born in Holland, Massachusetts, Dr. Dean, a graduate of Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia, practiced medicine in South Coventry and surrounding towns for forty years. In a 1912 poem celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the First Congregational Church in South Coventry, Forrest Morgan honored the late doctor:

Not cold in our hearts the physician, best brother in homes beyond name.
Whose face that the kind soul illumined bore healing wherever it came;
Who not seldom gave life to the new-born, kept sickness a lifetime at bay.
Then closed the cold eyelids forever and paid the last rites to the clay.

South Congregational Church, Granby (1918)

Happy Easter! Granby‘s South Congregational Church was organized on Salmon Brook Street in 1872. Originally called the Congregational Society of Salmon Brook, it met in a hall on the second floor of a building erected for the Granby Library Association in 1869. This structure, later also used as a Town House, burned down in 1917. While one newspaper editor suggested that it was time for the South Church to merge with Granby’s First Congregational Church, this notion conflicted with local beautification plans aimed at developing Salmon Brook as an ideal New England village. The Church and the Town worked together to erect a complex of four community buildings in the Colonial Revival style: the new Church, the Church’s Community House (also available to local groups not affiliated with the Church), a schoolhouse and a library. The 1918 Church was designed by the H. Wales Lines Company of Meriden. The gable-roofed, transverse section at the rear, designed by Carl R. Blanchard, Jr. of New Haven, was added in 1950.

Henry Hooker House (1769)

The house at 111 High Road in the Kensington section of Berlin was built c. 1769 by Elijah Hooker (1746-1823), a direct descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. The house was much altered in the mid-nineteenth century by Elijah‘s grandson, Henry Hooker (1809-1873), who added a new bracketed roof with dormer gable, a new entry portico and removed the old center chimney to create a central hall extending to the third floor. Henry Hooker was engaged in the carriage manufacturing business in New Haven, becoming the head of Henry Hooker & Co. in the 1860s.

Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher House (1762)

The house at 545 Amity Road in Bethany was built in 1760 or 1762. It faces south, parallel to the road, and is built into a hillside. It was originally owned by Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher. The earliest known conveyance of the property was in 1851 from Lysias Beecher to David Beecher and William M. Hull. It passed through other owners until Hubert W. Delano acquired it in 1946. It was conveyed in 1955 to Edna L. Delano (1890-1982), who had been an army nurse in World War One. In 1986, her sons, Hubert and William Delano, gave a parcel of land south of the house, called the Delano Sanctuary, to the Bethany Land Trust in honor of their mother, Edna L. Delano.

This post has been updated on March 26, 2021 with new information from the current owner (since 1986) of the house. The name of the post has also been changed from the “Lysias Beecher House” to the “Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher House” to reflect how it is listed in the State Register of Historic Places.

Adelaide Wilcox House (1852)

The house at 880 Hopmeadow Street in Simsbury, named for Miss Adelaide Wilcox, was built in 1852-1853 and has been owned by a number of prominent families associated with the Ensign Bickford Company. Originally having an Italianate design, the house was altered to the Neo-Classical Revival style around 1900. Also added was a third floor with a grand ballroom. Since 1950 the house has been the Vincent Funeral Home.