The Capt. Dolbeare House, located at 70 North Cove Road in Old Saybrook, is an 1855 ship captain’s home. The house was enlarged and remodeled in 1931, at which time the two-story colonnade on the west gable end was most likely added. The house was renovated by developer John Aldi in the 1990s.
When it opened in 1959, the stylishly modern Grantmoor Motor Lodge, 3000 Berlin Turnpike in Newington, was billed as “Gracious Grantmoor” and offered travelers a pool, golf course and restaurant/banquet hall (the latter added in 1960). When I-91 was built in 1965 it bypassed traffic away from the Turnpike and the Grantmoor soon switched to a more adult theme that included mirrors on the ceilings. (more…)
The United States Post Office in Madison (781 Boston Post Road) was completed in 1940. Inside is a New Deal era mural called “Gathering Seaweed from the Sound,” painted by William Abbott Cheever in 1940. The building and mural were created using Treasury Department funds.
The red saltbox house at 37 Buena Vista Road in West Hartford was built about 1752 by Samuel Stanley for his son, also named Samuel, who married Joanna Goodman in 1754. It was later owned by members of the Woodruff and Allen families and in 1943 was purchased by West Hartford to be a caretakers house for the town’s golf course. In 1976 the West Hartford Art League began leasing the building, which was restored to become the Saltbox Gallery.
Theophilus Jones (1690-1781) moved to Wallingford in 1711. He built up his farm property and c. 1740 built a house on Cook Hill, in the southwest corner of town, now 40 Jones Road. His son, Theophilus Jones, Jr. (1723-1815), continued to amass land and was one of the few residents of Wallingford who owned slaves. Three more generations of this wealthy family would farm the property until it was turned over to tenant farmers and then eventually sold in 1914. It continued as a dairy farm until 1937, when it was acquired by Charles F. Montgomery (1910-1978), a leading authority on American decorative arts. He undertook the restoration of the house and lived there until 1950, when he left Wallingford to become a curator at the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum in Delaware. He was appointed the museum’s director in 1954. In addition to the Jones House itself, the site in Wallingford has a number of outbuildings, including a woodshed and a barn, carpentry shop, carriage house and cider mill complex, all original to the farm. There’s also an icehouse and a pigeon house, moved to the property by Montgomery from Middletown.
Wallingford Bank and Trust Company was incorporated in 1916. The bank acquired a parcel of land at the corner of Center and William Streets in Wallingford in 1930. An existing brick building on the site was razed and a new bank building, designed by Harper & West of Boston, was erected there the following year (see “Wallingford Bank Lets Contract For $100,000 Building: Work to Be Started About January 1 At Center and Williams Streets,” Hartford Courant, December 13, 1930). The entrance to the building was originally on the corner, at the street intersection, but this was converted to a window at a later date and a new entrance was built (possibly an extension of the original building) on the Center Street side. The bank merged with the Connecticut Bank and Trust Company in 1962 (the merger came close to not being allowed because it eliminated one of the few banks in town and made CBT the second-largest bank in the state). Today the building is a branch of Bank of America.
The first Catholic Mass in Wallingford was celebrated on December 22, 1847 in the home of James Hanlon on Main Street. Wallingford became a mission of St. Rose of Lima Church in Meriden in 1851. Services were soon held in Union Hall. As described in the 1895 Souvenir History of Wallingford, Connecticut:
The necessary funds for building of a church were soon after raised, the subscription list being added to liberally by the Protestants of the town. The first church was a building forty by sixty feet in dimensions, the corner stone of which was laid November 23, 1857 the ceremony being performed by Rev. Thomas Quinn. Before the building was completed, during the saying of mass, part of the unfinished floor gave way, resulting in the injury of several persons and causing great confusion.
The church was completed in 1859, but the new Holy Trinity parish would again become Meriden’s mission because of the decrease in members with the outbreak of the Civil War. Holy Trinity was restored to full parish status in 1867 and the cornerstone of a new church (68 North Colony Street) was blessed on September 24, 1876. Quoting again from the Souvenir History:
In 1875, the old church having become too small for the growing membership, ground was broken for a new edifice. On account of the scarcity of funds, progress was slow in the building of the new church, and while in an uncompleted state, in the summer of 1878, the old church was completely demolished by the tornado visiting Wallingford at that time, thirty members of the congregation being included among the citizens who perished thereby. The following year the new church had become so far completed as to admit of services being held in the basement, the present edifice, however, was not completed until 1887. The church property is among the finest of the State. The church is of cuneiform shape and a brick structure, 148 feet in length and 104 feet in its extreme width. From the floor to the apex of the roof the height is nearly 50 feet. The windows of the edifice, presented to the church, are marvels of art. Connected with the church is a handsome parochial residence[.]
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