George Hopson House (1850)

The Italianate-style former house at 50 North Main Street in Kent was built circa 1850. It is associated with the prominent Hopson family, who were wealthy farmers and iron merchants in Kent in the nineteenth century. It is identified as the residence of George Hopson in an 1874 map of Kent. In more recent years, the house was converted to become a branch of the New Milford Savings Bank (which became NewMil Bank in 2000) and is now a branch of Webster Bank (which acquired NewMil Bankcorp in 2006).

Mildred C. Mallory Building (1963)

Mildred C. Mallory Building

Designed to fit in with the many historical nineteenth-century buildings at Mystic Seaport, the museum’s MIldred C. Mallory Building was erected in 1963 using stone from a house in the Fort Rachel area of Mystic that had been destroyed in the 1938 hurricane. Serving as Mystic Seaport’s members’ lounge and membership office, the building named for Mildred C. Mallory (1897-1961) as a memorial to honor her efforts for the museum’s membership program. The first floor is covered with granite ashlar and the second floor with clapboards.

(more…)

Benjamin Bissell House (1849)

The stone house at 637 Bantam Road in Litchfield, which is now a restaurant, was built in circa 1849 by Benjamin Bissell, who had acquired the land in 1840. He sold the house in 1850 to Abel H. Clemons. Stone houses are uncommon in the area, but around the same time Benjamin was constructing this house, Henry B. Bissell used granite from the same quarry to build the stone at 202 Maple Street. The house has limited stylistic elaboration, except for a prominent Italianate-style hip roof with a monitor/cupola. After 1875 the house was owned by the Brundage family.

St. Paul’s Church, Bantam (1843)

In 1797, Episcopalians in the Bantam section of Litchfield organized a new parish, originally called the Second Episcopal Society, which separated from the town’s First Episcopal Society (now St. Michael’s Church). The new parish‘s original building, known as the West Church, was located on a rise near the intersection of Bantam Road and Maple Street known as Church Hill, across from the Bantam cemetery. The parish’s current church, dedicated to Saint Paul, was built in 1843 and was consecrated by Bishop Thomas C. Brownell on November 1, 1844. The Greek Revival-style building, located at 802 Bantam Road, was extended to the rear with an addition constructed in two stages: an undercroft built in 1951-2 and a second story completed in 1962-3. The church has six Gothic-style stained glass windows that were installed in 1885-6. A more detailed history of the church can be found in this PDF document.

New Video: Savitt Jewelers and the History of a Section of Asylum Street, Hartford CT

YouTube player

Savitt Jewelers was a beloved Hartford institution, famous for the slogan P.O.M.G. (Peace of Mind Guaranteed). For half a century the store was located on the south side of Asylum Street. In this video, I talk about Savitt’s and some of the earlier businesses that existed in the same section of Asylum Street going back to the nineteenth century. These included a number of clothiers, one whose fame was compared to that of Lord Byron. Another clothing store was run by a former Hartford mayor and yet another was damaged during a major riot caused by the distribution of free suspenders.

New Video: Trumbull Street Before the Hartford Civic Center/XL Center

YouTube player

The Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut opened in January 1975. The roof collapsed in 1978 and was rebuilt in 1980. The Civic Center became the XL Center in 2007. Long before the Civic Center was built, the block of Trumbull Street between Asylum Street and Church Street had several notable (and now lost) buildings, like the lavish Allyn House Hotel, the Hartford County Court House and the City Club Building.