Augustus Post House (1826)

The large Federal-style brick house at 4 Main Street (the corner of Routes 66 and 85) in Hebron was built c. 1820-1826 by Augustus Post. He soon sold the large residence and it passed through a series of owners that included Dr. John S. Peters and his business partner Abner Hendee. Peters was Governor of Connecticut from 1831 to 1833. In the late nineteenth century the house was acquired by W. S. Hewitt, who used it for his general store and post office. At some point the house was extended on the north side with a frame addition. The west side of the house has an entrance with a twentieth-century shed-roofed portico and the south side entrance was once altered to function as the storefront. The Hewitt family owned the house into the 1970s and it is commonly known as the Hewitt House. In 1978 the house was converted into office space. At that time the current Federal-style entrance on the south side was created.

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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.