Orlando Burr House (1882)

As related in an obituary by George A. Bronson in The Christian Advocate (Vol. 84, No. 11, March 18, 1909), Orlando Burr (1847-1908)

attended the common schools at Haddam, and was graduated from a business college in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Returning home, he entered the employ of D. & H. Scovil, of Higganum as a bookkeeper, and later was made superintendent, in which position he remained until one year ago. May 18, 1882, Mr. Burr was married to Clara E. daughter of Oliver C. and Augusta Neff, of Higganum. To this union were given two children—Eugene Orlando, who is employed as bookkeeper for D.& H. Scovil, and Ethel Clara, who is a student in Wesleyan University. Mr. Burr was interested in politics, voting somewhat as his conscience dictated, but did not desire political preferment, having twice refused the nomination for representative. Both he and his wife have been consistent members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he was a trustee and steward, also treasurer of the church for some years. He was steadfast, straightforward in his business, devout in his religion and conscientious in politics.

Burr acquired the lot at 33 Maple Street in Higganum (part of Haddam) in 1876 and traveled the country looking for a house design he wanted to duplicate for his own residence. In the end he decided to go with plans he created himself. Construction on the house began in 1881 and was completed the following year, after his marriage. The house remained in his family until 1952.

Grumman-St. John House (1750)

The earliest core of the house at 93 East Street in Norwalk dates to at least 1750 (and perhaps earlier). It was built by Samuel Grumman, a carpenter and builder who came from Fairfield to erect Norwalk’s second meeting house. During the Revolutionary War, the Grumman House was at the center of the Battle of Norwalk in July 1779, when General William Tryon’s raiding forces burned much of the town. The house was damaged, but it was rebuilt in the 1780s and expanded in the nineteenth century. The current roof was added in the 1870s. In 1805, the Grumman family had sold the house to Stephen Buckingham St. John, whose descendants, including the Hoyt family, owned it until 1925. The building was subdivided into apartments in 1928.

In 2001, the neighboring Norwalk Inn & Conference Center purchased the house with the intention of demolishing it to make way for an addition to the hotel. Preservationists rallied to block these plans and preserve the historic house. Litigation ensued and in 2010, after an extended legal battle, a compromise was reached: the Inn would renovate the dilapidated building to contain extended stay suites with permission being granted to the Inn itself to expand to a third floor. The renovations were completed in 2013.

Our Lady of Fatima Church, Hartford (1988)

Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Parish was established in Hartford in 1958 to serve the local community of immigrants from Portugal and the Azores. The founding pastor, Father José Dias Martins da Silva, purchased a vacant Danish Lutheran Church on Russ Street where the parish worshiped until the basement chapel of a new church was completed in 1986. Our Lady of Fatima Church, located at 50 Kane Street in Hartford, was dedicated on April 30, 1988. The parish also later erected a community center.

Hollister-Day Cottage (1872)

One of the many lost homes of Hartford is the Barnabas Deane House, which once stood on Grove Street. Barnabas was the brother of Silas Deane of Wethersfield and he is said to built the house on instructions from his famous brother who ended up never returning from Europe to live in it. The house was later home to Nelson Hollister and then was occupied by The Open Hearth. While the Deane House was torn down in the 1920s to make room for a parking lot for the Hartford Club, another home owned by Mr. Hollister, who was a prominent businessman and the first treasurer of the Connecticut Valley Railroad, survives in the Borough of Fenwick in Old Saybrook. Located at 22 Fenwick Avenue, it was built by Hollister in 1872, making it one of the oldest cottages to be constructed in the Fenwick summer colony. In 1888, Hollister’s daughter sold the house to George H. Day of Hartford. Day made many additions to the house, but not always with a concern for aesthetic matters: he once built a second floor lavatory with exposed plumbing running down the house’s exterior! After c. 1917, the cottage served as an annex to the neighboring Riversea Inn. In 1949 it became a private residence again when it was sold to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Jones, who were the first to make the cottage habitable year-round. You can read more about the cottage in Marion Hepburn Grant’s The Fenwick Story (Connecticut Historical Society, 1974), pages 76-78.

Gales Ferry School House (1868)

The community of Gales Ferry in Ledyard was served for generations by a one-room schoolhouse. The surviving school building, erected in 1868, is the third to have stood on the same site (4 Hurlbutt Road) since 1750. It was used as a school until a new two-room building (now the Gales Ferry Community Center) was opened in January 1929. The former Gales Ferry School House was later restored by the Ledyard Historical Society.

Kensington Congregational Church Parsonage (1870)

The house at 14 Robbins Road in the Kensington section of the town of Berlin was perhaps built c. 1860 (it is so listed in Berlin property records). The lot (with no dwelling mentioned) was sold to the Kensington Ecclesiastical Society by Edward Cowles in 1870 and it has since served as the parsonage of the Kensington Congregational Church. A volume released to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the church in 1912 indicates that, instead of a preexisting house,

The present parsonage was built in 1869-70. A debt of $4100, incurred in part on account of the parsonage, was raised by subscription in 1871.

The parsonage is already noted on the map of Berlin in the 1869 Hartford County Atlas by Baker & Tilden.

Kenyon Mill (1863)

The town of Coventry was once home to a number of water-powered mills. One in South Coventry, known as the Kenyon Mill, was built next to a mill pond in 1863, replacing an earlier mill (built in 1836) that had suffered a major fire. The mill was acquired by C. H. Kenyon from S. R. Moredock, manufacturer of satinet, in 1864. Kenyon had begun making woolen pants (Kentucky jeans) in Coventry in the 1840s and by 1870 his mill had developed into a major enterprise with over seventy employees. He later made ladies dress flannels. After Kenyon, a series of textile manufacturers occupied the mill, ending with National Silk, manufacturers of Tioga yarn, which occupied the building from 1934 until 1972. In more recent years the town was seeking proposals for the adaptive reuse of the mill. In 2007 it was acquired by the Corporation for Independent Living, which has converted it into condominium units known as Kenyon Falls.