Dr. Gilbert Preston House (1790)

The house at 714 Tolland Stage Road in Tolland was built circa 1790 as a saltbox. After a fire in 1868, the house was rebuilt in the Italianate style by Dr. Gilbert Preston, who owned it from 1845 until his death in 1883. Many of Dr. Preston’s medical instruments and other items are on display at the Old Jail Museum in Tolland. The house was later the residence of Dr. Preston’s daughter Sarah (1854-1939). As related in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Tolland and Windham Counties (1903):

[Henry Young] was married second, April 21, 1896, to Sarah C. (Preston) Lathrop, of Tolland, a daughter of Dr. Gilbert H. and Sarah (Cogswell) Preston, the former of whom was for many years the leading physician of Tolland, where his personal standing was also very high.

The house was next owned by Sarah’s granddaughter, Florence Edith Meacham Anderson (1900-1966). In 1997 the then owner replaced the original wraparound porch with the current entry portico and added a sunroom on the south side.

I Am That I Am Ministries (1906)

The church at 23 Franklin Street, at the corner of Arch Street, in Ansonia was built between 1900 and 1906: it does not appear on the 1900 Sanborn insurance map, but does appear on the 1906 Sanborn map, where it is labeled “Swedish Church.” In recent years it was the Evangelical Baptist Church (founded in 1958). It was placed on the market in August 2015 and was sold last July. It is now I Am That I Am Ministries Inc.

Citizens Engine Company No.2, Seymour (1892)

A volunteer fire company, initially called Ocean Fire Company #1, was formed in Seymour in October 1882. The following month it was renamed Humphrey Engine and Hose Company #1 and in 1884, after the purchase of a new steam engine, was reorganized as Citizens Engine Company No.2. The company’s original firehouse was replaced with a new brick building with granite trim (current address 26 DeForest Street) in 1892. The tower was added in 1897 and a concrete addition was built in 1976.

Benjamin Bosworth House (1801)

Between 1791 and 1801, architect/builder Vini Goodell erected an imposing mansion for Benjamin Bosworth, a wealthy merchant and landowner. Also known as Squire Bosworth’s Castle, this grand Federal-style house is located on John Perry Road in Eastford, near the Congregational Church (Bosworth served on its building committee and removed the previous meeting house from the site). The Benjamin Bosworth House has a distinctive monitor roof. The monitor third floor was built as a Masonic meeting room and retains its built-in benches and has fireplaces at either end. As Janette Trowbridge, a later resident of the house, wrote about the house [included in A Modern History of Windham County, Connecticut, Vol. I (1920), edited by Allen B. Lincoln]:

The framing and sills were laid by the North Star. The hand carvings on the mantels, windows, and doors were elaborate for that time. They were cut with a jack knife by an employee who lived and worked in the house for an entire winter. Squire Bosworth desired a house which should be different from any other in the neighborhood. In this he succeeded, for the house has the appearance of a small gable-roofed house built on top of a larger square-roofed house.